VMware Horizon Community
bharwood
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-21-2011 07:43 AM

Linked-Clone Printer Issues

I have a linked-clone floating assiginment in View 4.5 that I'm having a few issues with.   I do not have any persistent disks configured and the guest OS in the pool is Windows 7.

The issue I am having is two fold.  The first is that when a user installs a networked printer the clone desktop it appears for all users on all clones.  The second issue is that refreshing the pool or the machine doesn't get rid of the printer install.  I have confirmed that my parent vm doesn't not have the included printer installed.  I have refreshed the entire pool.  The pool is also set to refresh immediately at logoff.  I know I could just recompose the pool to get rid of the printers, but that kind of defeats the purpose.

1. Why does does a printer installed by a user on a cloned vm propogate out to all machines in the pool?  Shouldn't the printer be contained within the guest OS user profile stored on the OS disk and removed upon a refresh of the desktop?

2. Why doesn't the installed network printer disappear after a refresh of the desktop/pool?

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3 Replies
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal
‎02-21-2011 08:26 AM

1:      The clone is a seperate entity from the other clones and the only common part is the replica.  There shouldn't be a case where a user installs something to a clone and it shows up for everyone.

2:   A refresh would take it back to the base image so if the base image was clean it shouldn't be there.

Could it be something like the thinprint redirection or maybe the rdp printer redirection?

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kgsivan
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎02-22-2011 12:00 AM

I think the described problem may happen in a non-vdi envronment too.

Windows 7 can discover network printers and add automatically.

Do you have any domain settings for printer to be added automatically ?

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bharwood
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-22-2011 04:44 AM

No, we aren't pushing any printers to the machines via AD.  That is our intent once we figure out this issue.

It is possible that the user installed the network printer manually on a couple of the clones and since we are just still testing we may only be logging in the the few that the printer was installed on, but that wouldn't explain why the printers remain after a refresh.  ???

Really odd issue.  I'm going to recompose the pool to see if the printer goes away.  If it/they do, I'll try to recreate the problem.  I'll reply to the thread with what I find.

Thanks for your replys.

Brad

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