Persona Printing

[kslish]

I'm new to Personas and am in the process of testing a floating Persona pool it so we don't have to have so many staff persistent desktops to manage.

I believe have everything working except for printing.

1.) If I add a network printer as a local printer (by creating a TCP/IP port), nothing sticks and the printer disappears after logging off.

2.) If I add a network printer shared off of a print server by using it's path (i.e. //printeserver/printername) the printer stays, but complains that it doesn't have the appropriate print drivers installed after re-login, although I am thinking of adding the print drivers to the base image to see if that solves this.

However, all of our printers aren't necessarily shared via the print server.  Sooo....

3.) I tried adding a printer as a network printer and connected to it via the printer's IP address.  It installed, and already had the drivers natively in Windows 7, but this printer again disappears after logoff.

So #2 is the only one that I got to stick to the user's Persona....but that will only fix part of the problem since we've got a lot of networked printers that aren't served via our main print server.

Am I barking up the wrong tree?  Should I be trying to setup printers differently?  I'm finding the documentation thin and confusing on this part of Personas.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[Makian]

FYI I am also encountering exactly the same senario so you are not alone. Sorry i don't have a solution but will definately share the details if we find one.

[blakebevard]

You definitely aren't barking up the wrong tree.  Are you using primarily windows machines with connections into View or are your users on Thin/Zero clients?

If they are logging into View from Windows, it will pass through all the installed printers to their View session.  Only the default printer will show up in Devices and Printers, but if you go into a program and select File -> Print all the printers will be available there.  You said that you had printers that were not on your print server.  Are these local printers or are they networked printers that are just not served?  If the former, you will need to add the drivers to the base image.  If the latter, could you add them to the print server?  I have not run into an issue of the print drivers being invalid on the next login.  Do you have the proper drivers installed on the print server for the OS you are running?

Another thing that I have run into is users having issues with the default printer changing back.  To resolve this we are using the utility Defset. The info for it can be found here.  In order to make it work, we had to start it via a batch file that looks like the following:

PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 60000 >NUL
C:\Windows\System32\Defset.exe /MIN /INI:"\\ortnpersona1\roaming\%username%\defset.ini"

The location in the argument is the user's redirected profile location for some folders.  We are using folder redirection combined with persona management.  The ping for 60 seconds allows for the machine to install any network printers and have them available before defset goes to set the default printer.  I know this doesn't really answer all of your question, but maybe it will help you once you get to your next one.

[kslish]

We're now up to View 5.1.2 and this problem still persists.  We are using thin and zero clients.  The only printers that work correctly through logon and logoffs on our Persona desktops are the print server shared printers using a path (ex: //printserver/printer).  However, this doesn't help us with our networked printers that aren't shared through a print server.

I've also added universal print drivers for our Ricoh and HP printers to the base image.

Has anyone managed to solve this?

[kslish]

Just wanted to update this thread.  Managed to get through to the right person at VMware support and they helped me resolve the issue using ThinPrint Location-based Group Policy (pages 199-201 in the View 5.1 Admin Manual).  Now I can at least assign non-print server based printers via IP to users using that AutoConnect policy.  The drawback is users can't add printers themselves like they can printers on a print server and I have to do it manually via policy, but it's better than nothing, or adding every printer to a print server. 

[iamxCPx]

Hi kslish,

Are you using the AD user/group on LBP?

If you are, do you mind sharing the print screen of your LBP setting? I'd like to see the format.

I'm trying to get it to work with AD user/group but couldn't get it to work. If I use * on the user/group column, it will work no problem but that means everyone will get that printer which is what I don't want.

I'd like to split it by departments or location.

Thanks in advance.

[jonathanjabez]

This issue occurs because the default printer that is configured in the Persona Management profile is getting overwritten.

Default printer settings do not persist through View sessions when Persona Management is enabled:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=203972...

Refer to the below given Administration guide for the detailed steps on "Configuring Location Based Printing"