Printing is inconsistent

[DeNacho]

i have a Win2K3 SP1 TS server. i cannot get printing to work
consistently. i found several articles on the GP for Fallback driver
and enabled that on the server. everyone can see their local
printers, but not everyone can print to them. for example, my home
printer shows up fine, but when i try to print from Notepad, for
example, it just spews out blank pages. in another vendor-specific
app, it's garbage. is this just a simple driver issue? i'm thinking
it is, but we don't really have the means to install every driver for
every printer that might be out in our user community. i thought the
Fallback driver was supposed to take care of that. any thoughts?

 

[TP]

For the fallback printer to work your printers need to
natively understand PCL or PS. Many printers, especially
lower cost printers and multifunctions, do not have this
ability, thus they will not work. There are even printers
costing several hundred $$ and up that are not compatible
with the fallback drivers.

If you have many different printers you need to support
I would recommend you look at purchasing a universal
printer driver solution. Here are two for you to consider:

Print-IT

http://www.provisionnetworks.com/solutions/print-it/print-it.aspx

ScrewDrivers v4

http://www.tricerat.com/screwdrivers.php

You should also take a look at the Windows Server 2008 beta
version, specifically the new TS Easy Print feature. You can
download and install it for testing.

Introducing Terminal Services Easy Print: Part 1

http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2007/04/26/introducing-terminal-services-easy-print-part-1.aspx

-TP

DeNacho wrote:
> i have a Win2K3 SP1 TS server. i cannot get printing to work
> consistently. i found several articles on the GP for Fallback driver
> and enabled that on the server. everyone can see their local
> printers, but not everyone can print to them. for example, my home
> printer shows up fine, but when i try to print from Notepad, for
> example, it just spews out blank pages. in another vendor-specific
> app, it's garbage. is this just a simple driver issue? i'm thinking
> it is, but we don't really have the means to install every driver for
> every printer that might be out in our user community. i thought the
> Fallback driver was supposed to take care of that. any thoughts?