[THIN] Re: Printers randomly disappear in Citrix
- From: "Rick Mack" <Rick.Mack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 08:41:29 +1000
Hi,
Excel gets a bit more close and personal to the printer drivers than other
office products.
From win2k onwards, all O.S. native (supplied with O.S.) non-postscript printer
drivers are unidriver-based. That is, the driver characteristics are defined in
a text script file with a .GPD file extension. For more complex printers, or
printers belonging to a common set of models, the GPD file may also reference
other GPS include files. This can cause some interesting problems which I'll
elaborate on later.
Before an application can print to a printer using a newly installed printer
driver (unidriver based) the GPD file has to be compiled into a BUD file
(binary printer description).
If the user attempting to print doesn't have write access to
%systemroot%\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 then they won't be able to compile
a BUD file and prinit will fail. In the case of Excel, the printer won't even
show up.
Once an administrator tries to print to the "failing" printer, the BUD file has
been created and everyone is happy. But life isn't quite that simple.
If any new printer driver comes along that update any of the include .GPD
files, every driver that uses the same .GPD include file will need to be
recompiled into a new BUD file.
So if you install a new HP printer model that includes an updated .GPD include
file, every other HP printer using that GPD file will fail.
Until an admin connects to a printer using that driver.
If you want to retain directory security to
%systemroot%\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 then a possible "quick" fix is for
an admin to connect to all available network printers (and hopefully use all
the printer drivers that need to be recompiled) with something like:
for /f %i in ('net view \\print_server ^| find /i "print"') do
con2prt /c \\print_server
But the other solution is just to open up the directory permissions. It's easy
enough to do via group policy if you've got a bunch of servers.
regards,
Rick
Ulrich Mack
Volante Systems
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Werther, Chris
Sent: Sat 20/11/2004 1:05 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Printers randomly disappear in Citrix
Same issue here. We discovered the other day that if a domain admin prints to
the printer, it all of a sudden becomes available to the user in Excel.
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Fontein, N. (Niels)
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 8:38 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Printers randomly disappear in Citrix
We have the same problem here now and then. Most of the time it seems to be
network related, but we can't get a finger on it.
Groeten,
Niels Fontein
Coördinator Hardware
T 0485 499 375 / 226
F 0485 499 364
E N.Fontein@xxxxxxxxx
________________________________
Van: Brian Hall [mailto:bhall@xxxxxxxx]
Verzonden: donderdag 18 november 2004 4:59
Aan: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Onderwerp: [THIN] Printers randomly disappear in Citrix
When a user goes to print in Excel, sometimes printers are available, sometimes
they're not. When the printers disappear, users can still hit the 'Print' icon
and it sends the job to their default printer. The problem doesn't affect
other applications (Word, Access, etc) on the Citrix server and can happen to
any user randomly throughout the day. We recently doubled our user base from
45 to 90. Single server running W2KTS, Citrix MF FR2, Dell 2500 dual P4 2.4, 3
GB ram, dual swap files, paged pool memory fix.
Any idea what's causing this?
Thanks,
Brian Hall
Network Administrator
American Financial Realty Trust
680 Old York Road, Jenkintown PA 19046
Tel: 215-887-2280 ext.2840 Fax: 215-887-9856
Email: bhall@xxxxxxxx
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