Default Printer Changing w/Appstacks

[vap0r]

Connection Servers - 8.3
AppVolumes Manager- 4/2012
Horizon Agents - 7.13.1 & 8.3
AppVolumes Agents - 2.18.10 - Going to 4x after I finish recreating appstacks
Profiles - FSLogix

So this problem started when I upgraded our Horizon agents from 7.10 to 7.13.1.  I can revert our snapshot back to the 7.10 agents and all works fine.

Basically if I assign certain appstacks the default printer is changing back to Acrobat PDF with some and Microsoft PDF on others.  I've found a few threads that run batch files that reset the default printer based on a registry import but it doesn't always work.  Sometimes the printer gets added back in after the batch file runs to reset based on the DEM registry export.  We are using FSLogix and aren't doing a ton of importing/exporting via DEM.

Any ideas?  Pretty frustrating issue that I've been fighting for several weeks now.  It almost seems if something fundamentally changed with the Horizon agent between 7.10 and 7.13.1.  Also I've updated the agents to the latest Horizon agents and same issue.  My only way to make it work is to roll back to 7.10 which doesn't make sense.

[ada2017]

Hi,

I am not clear what the issue is. Whether default printer on agent VM is not client default printer? If no other SW (AppVolumes, DEM, etc.) change default printer, VMware Integrated Printing module in Horizon will change the default printer on agent VM to client default printer (default behavior). it means if printer A is default printer on client, it will be default printer on agent as well. So you saw this behavior in 7.10, but not in 7.13.1? There is no other SW's interferences and the only change is Horizon agent version?

[vap0r]

A user will set their default printer as a network printer, if they have specific appstacks attached (Acrobat DC for example), at next logon AdobePDF becomes the default.  I have one snapshot that it works correctly on (remembers the default printer) but if I reinstall the agent or go to anything newer than the 7.10 it's not remembering the default printer.  If I remove the appstacks it's fine.

[ada2017]

It looks like you don't want Horizon to change default printer in remote desktop/applications, is that true? If that is the case, Horizon agent 2012 introduced a policy for this. Refer to https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon/2012/horizon-remote-desktop-features/GUID-81E84F1C-C446-46....

You said "when you remove appstacks, the issue is gone." I don't sure what it is, and why it impacts the result. From your description, it seems user changed default printer (by manually or by some software). Like I said before, Horizon will change default printer as well. User, non-Horizon SW and Horizon SW all try to change default printer in same session, but they have no idea about other's operation, there is no coordination between them, so the final result is unpredictable.

[vap0r]

I may not have done a great job explaining it in the initial post.

The printer taking over the default isn't a local printer, it's a generic OS printer (Microsoft PDF, Adobe PDF, etc..).

User logs in and sets the default printer as a network mapped printer, logs out, logs back in and it's reset to the generic OS printer.  If I remove appstacks it works fine.  This started happening after upgrading the Horizon agent.

[ada2017]

You mentioned when you remove appstack, the issue is gone. It seems the issue is related to appstack, instead of Horizon.

By design Horizon will change default printer in remote session to client default printer, and user or other software shouldn't try to change default printer at the same time, it would be unknown which one will take effect. If user don't want default printer being changed by Horizon, he/she can upgrade to Horizon 2012 which can prevent default printer being changed.

If the "generic OS printer" means client default printer, then it is expected result.