Thinprint

[VSprague]

I was wondering if there was a way of allowing Thinprint to autoconnect local printers but prevent Thinprint from setting a default printer. The specific issue I'm having is client machines have the default Microsoft XPS writer and Thinprint autoconnects it to View and overwrites the users pre-existing default printer every time they login. I don't want to disable Thinprint for everyone just because a subset of user are having this issue. However if I can prevent it from changing the default printer then that would solve my issue completely.

[a_p_]

Please take a look at ThinPrint and default printers to see whether this helps.

André

[VSprague]

I'll try it, thank you

[VSprague]

It looked like that would work but the registry keys that post says to modify do not exist.

[MarAndreas]

Interesting.

I just checked with what I have available here:

Win7x64 Notebook with VMware View Client 5.0.0:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ThinPrint\Client

old Win XP Desktop with View Client 4.6:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Thinprint\Client

VMware Player VM running Win XP with View Client 4.6:

\Client does not exist

Probably because HKLM\SOFTWARE\ThinPrint was already present (from the VMware Tools)

Tried what would happen when I connected to my VM at work:

Only the default printer from the Player VM was mapped to the View VM

It was set as the default printer on the View VM

It worked normally, despite being redirected twice (it's actually installed on the Computer that's running VMware Player, and mapped to the "Player" VM by ThinPrint)

[VSprague]

It's running a Windows 7 32bit install. Is there a seperate version of Thinprint other than the version that comes with VMWare Tools? I've only installed Thinprint via vmware tools. If there is a more full version that would explain why I'm missing things.

[MarAndreas]

There are versions of ThinPrint in the VMware Tools, in View Agent, and in View Client.

IIUC, the version in Tools is for VMs running in Player or Workstation, to let them print on printers attached to the host; you can choose wheteher to install it in the installer's GUI.

The other two work together to map printers from Client computers to VMs running in the View infrastructure; they are installed by default, and not shown in the installer GUI - not installing them requires a command line install.

The registry entries I'm talking about are on the Client - having VMware Tools installed there, too, is somewhat unusual.

[VSprague]

Ok, the View machine has VMWare tools and of course the View Agent. The machine I'm connecting from only has the View client. I was looking for those thinprint registry settings on the View machine, not on the client.

[VSprague]

So besides making the registry change on the client machines is there anyway else of preventing thinprint from setting the default printer? I can deploy a gp to domain connected clients but I'm concerned about how many client machines are not on the domain.

[MarAndreas]

The only way I know is disabling the TPAutoConnect service.

Of course, that also stops automatic printer mapping, so you have to manually create a TP Output Gateway printer.

[VSprague]

I've made the registry change to several machines. It works properly probably 4 out of 5 times from what I've seen. Occasionally someone will login and it wills till map the local printer. However it does not map the defaut local printer every time. For example I have my default Epson printer and the windows default Fax and Microsoft XPS printers as well as onenote 2010. I can login to View and sometimes it may map the Fax, and then sometimes it maps the XPS printer, and then sometimes it will map the Default which is the Epson. And usually it does not set one of them as the default in View but sometimes it still does. So it's very inconsistent with how it maps and assigns printers. This is also all with the DefaultState registry entry set to 0.