I've encountered issues with Remote Desktop Easy Print users trying to print to their GDI / host-based printers from Remote Desktop sessions. The printer objects get redirected into the RD session and report a "Ready" state when addressed from within Office applications. A submitted print job however is just swallowed by the system - nothing is ever printed to the local printer and nothing is logged to the application or system logs of either the server or client systems.
I only have HP printers to test this with and have encountered the aforementioned symptoms with the following models:
- LaserJet P1106
- LaserJet P1505 (USB-connected)
- LaserJet P1606 with the original HP driver (seems to be GDI as well)
- LaserJet 1022 (USB)
And in the case of P1606, which supports PCL5e as well, I could verify that using compatible PCL5e drivers (I chose a LaserJet 4000 PCL 5e) instead of the original HP GDI drivers fixes the issue.
To my understanding, Easy Print streams down an XPS job which is then fed into the RD client's XPS processor and printed through the local driver. Following this logic, the procedure should be entirely driver-agnostic, and at the very least not choke up on GDI drivers. Why does it in the end? Suspecting a client issue, I have tested against Windows XP SP3 with some related updates installed as well as Windows 7 SP1, but the issue pertained to all client environments.
Environment:
- Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Session Host
- Windows 7 SP1 client
- Windows XP SP3 clients with KB946411 installed which is supposed to fix a number of Easy Print issues as well