In case anyone from VMware is monitoring this thread I want to reply if for no other reason than to add my unhappiness at having the default printer forced with no way of telling VMware Integrated Printing (VIP) otherwise. We have a mechanism in place already to set our default printers, and I don't want VIP messing with it at all. Leave my default printers alone!!
We have set up filters to block some always-unneeded local printers from being blocked, such as "Fax", "Microsoft XPS Document Writer", and "Microsoft Print to PDF". This is done via Group Policy (Computer Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | VMware Integrated Printing | Printer Filter). I'll put the filter string we use below. I don't totally get all the syntax, but someone set it up for us and it works, and we've added to it (as described below) following the conventions he used. The filtering is working perfectly for us.
Our solution is to completely block locally-attached printers that are "under our control" (i.e. company owned) that we are mapping already through normal network sharing/connecting. We do this by implementing a standard naming convention for all locally-attached printers (that we want to block). We now always include the term "LOCAL" in the printer name. We have added that term to our filter setting in the aforementioned GPO. It now works perfectly for us. You'll need to be sure you have the .adm and.admx for "printerRedirection". You can get them from the "VMware-Horizon-Extras-Bundle" download for your version of Horizon.
Any printers that you WANT mapped into the session, just don't add them to the filter. Unfortunately, it's going to be mapped as the default printer, and I don't have a workaround for that (other than maybe something talked about in this article, which we haven't tried yet).
Anyway, I hope this helps. And VMware, please give us a way (Group Policy) to tell VIP "Do not set the default printer").
Here's our filter string for the GPO:
PrinterName=".*Fax.*" OR PrinterName=".*Microsoft Print to PDF.*" OR PrinterName=".*Microsoft XPS Document Writer.*" OR PrinterName=".*OneNote.*" OR PrinterName=".*LOCAL.*"
