App volumes 2.12 CutePDF installed in golden Image and appstack connected = PDF printer, fax and xps printer disconnect?

[Maarten_Caus]

Hi,

I did a clean install of App volumes 2.12 and recreated all my appstacks. I installed CutePDF in my base image Windows 8.1 pro and than everything works fine.

When I attach any appstack the PDF printer, XPS printer and the Fax are disconnected.

Any ideas?

Kind regards,

Maarten

[ITVTom]

We attempted this in our environment and the issue was still present. We recreated Office, Foxit and Firefox added the reg keys and created new linked clones and confirmed that the Print to PDF feature was working before attaching the app stacks. Once we attached the app stacks the printers then greyed out. We have applications that do not even add a printer and they are still causing the installed printers to grey out and any local printers connected to USB also do not work. VMware has also provide me with a svdriver.sys file to place in c:\windows\system32\drivers location but this did not fixe my issue as well. I have a webex tomorrow morning with engineering they are going to jump into my environment and preview the issue. I will let you know the results.

[FFNVMware]

Perhaps a different issue. My printers were not grayed out, they were just gone completely.

[ITVTom]

Any printers created inside the appstack do not show up at all . These are local printers that are already on the base image. Fax, XPS & PDF printer along with any locally attached USB printers. They are in a disconnected state,

[cliffvmwareeuc]

These exclusions from the snapvol.cfg do work:

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Print\Printers

However it does matter whether your VM's are 32 bit or 64 bit so at the end of the snapvol.cfg you will find the x64 section whereas all above that is for x86.

Place the above keys in the relevant section and save the file and try it again........

[DanVM99]

I've come across this issue despite upgrading to the very latest v2.12 121516 version  of AppVols. Though we're attempting to install CutePDF within an AppStack with a group of other "Standard Applications" like Office, 7-Zip etc. Does anyone know if AppVols captures printers successfully, or do they need to be installed in the Gold image?

Thanks

[alsmk2]

I think the general consensus is that PDF Writers are not a good candidate for appstacks; however, in reality, I've seen a pretty even mix of clients who put them in the gold image and those who appstack it.

I've not come across any issues in doing either way until v2.12.

[DanVM99]

That's useful to know thank you.

Just hope VMware get this issue patched asap. It's a real pain having to go through the full back, uninstall, reinstall plus agent updates x2 environments each time they change something though.. Really need a separate patch mechanism.

[FFNVMware]

Odd, our guest OS is Windows 7 64bit and this solved the issue for us.

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Print\Printers

[Boe_K]

We had a ticket open with VMware on this as well and found that once we added the mentioned registry keys to the snapvol.cfg that we had to re-create any broken appstacks from scratch in order to get them to work. Simply doing an update did not work as it pulled over the existing snapvol.cfg instead of the updated one in our template. 

# 2.12 Fix from Engineering

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers

exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Print\Printers

[Maarten_Caus]

Hi all,

Adding the registry keys to the exclusions in the snapvol.cfg is the workarround supported by VMware.

Good luck,

Kind regards,

Maarten

[DanVM99]

I can confirm that I've tested putting these registry keys in our AppStack template and any new stacks are problem free as a result. I did also find that you can go and manually edit the snapvol.cfg file when updating an existing AppStack by unhiding system files and going into C:\snapvolumestemp\MountPoints\sid during the provisioning process. In there you can add those two exclusions into the snapvols.cfg file before sealing up the updated stack. The resulting updated stack contained a working CutePDF printer for me.

One other thing I have noticed is that the printers shown in Windows 'Devices and Printers' appear to differ from those shown when attempting to print using any captured applications delivered with AppVols. I seem to only have CutePDF and one other network printer in Windows but when printing from a virtual app like Adobe Reader or Word I have additional network printers that appear to have been brought through from my host PC.. There's probably a simple explaination for this but I can't work it out. I thought Thinprint would bring these network printers through into the Windows 7 VM being served up from View and not AppVols presenting them exclusively through the virtualised apps..

[ITVTom]

What OS version is the fix working for?

[DanVM99]

We're using Windows 7 32bit

[ITVTom]

Does anyone have this working on Windows 10 LTSB 64bit?

[Ray_handels]

I haven't seen this issue on Windows 10 1607 (full version) so we didn't have to use any fix for it.

[Maarten_Caus]

I'm using Windows 8.1 64 bit.

[FFNVMware]

Windows 7 Pro 64bit.

[JonAmadori]

In our environment we use App Stacks and App Writable Volumes, both of which have had their snapvol.cfg files updated but if both an App Stack and an App Writable Volume are attached at the same time the local printers disappear again.  If we attach either an App Stack or an App Writable Volume then the exclusions restore access to the local printers. 

Not sure if anyone else has ran into this issue, but I am hoping to hear back from VMware soon on how to restore access to local printers with both App Stacks and App Writable attached to a desktop.

[sbartelme]

Please let me know if you get a resolution from VMware on this issue.  We have the same or similar problem.  When using App Stacks and Writable Volumes, locally installed printers are greyed out and App Stack printers disappear.  I have opened up a case with VMware tech support as well and will post any feedback I receive.

[JonAmadori]

So I am not sure if this qualifies as a fix but, I was given an update to several files to put into my base image.  I was given the following files:

• svdrivercatalogfile.cat
• svdriver.inf
• svdriver.sys

I was told to copy the svdriver.sys file into C:\Windows\System32\drivers and the svdriver.sys, svdriver.inf and svdrivercatalogfile.cat files into the AV Agent directory (C:\programfiles x86\cloud volumes\agent)

When doing this and then recomposing my pool, IF a user's writable volume was deleted after I updated the snapvol.cfg file with the exclusions listed earlier in the thread then their local printers were restored.  I did not need to update or replace my Appstacks with new ones after the snapvol.cfg update.  However for users that I have not deleted their writable volume then they still do not have access to their local printers.

I have informed VMWare of this information and will let you know if they have any additional updates.