After a customer reported problems with printer management, we performed deeper analyzes and tests. The ugly solution has been replaced with a major overhaul of our printer management.

The basic problem is that the user's session on the Windows server when RemoteApp is used is not fully initialized when our product has started. In any case, there is a delay before the printer setup is complete. Delay appears to be greater if printers are installed on the server and should be combined with the user's included printers. If Single Sign On is activated in our product, the problem becomes even greater, as the session may otherwise have time to be completed while the user fills in the login form.

We have taken the following steps to get around the problem:

1. Previously, we asked for available printers and standard printers when opening a window that has print options. Now: We only ask when the user chooses to make a preview / select printer for printer printing. Then hopefully so much time has passed that the session is completed.

2. To find out which is the user's default printer, we use option d) (as shown below) if this has a value. If key / value is missing, alternative b) is used. A solution that also works in cases where the installation is not on an RDS server. Function PrintSetPrinter is called with the result of the evaluation.

3. As long as the user has not printed on a printer, no session printer is set to 'permanent' - we are looking for standard printers according to point 2. Ie. as long as the user only prints on print media other than the printer or does a preview, we can finally get the correct default printer once the Windows session is complete. After the first print to printer during a session, we call PrintGetPrinter() in all subsequent prints.

4. More controls and error handling.

This is a picture from a little program I made to find standard printers in five different ways. Has run the program via RemoteApp. Here everything is the same, but it can vary a lot when you run it several times during the first seconds of a session. Also varies with how printers are installed. The result led to the handling according to point 2 above.

Thanks Chris for quick response!

Now I have received answers to your questions from cloud technicians:
1. We use Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization.
2. Microsoft Windows Server Version 6.3 (Build 9600)

The heading has thus become wrong on this case, since 6.3 is Windows Server 2012 R2. On the other hand, it should be the same conditions as in Windows Server 2016, since the default management of printers is redone from the 2012 version?

Regards
/Leif

Hi Leif;

  Can you tell us ...

1) Is this native MS-Windows or on a VM / Citrix environment?

2) What version & build of MS-Windows?

Regards ... Chris