Adding Support for Automatic Creation of Windows 98 Client Printers with New Drivers

ID: Q239088

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

SYMPTOMS

Windows 2000 Terminal Services supports the automatic creation of locally attached client printers. When a user connects to Windows 2000 Terminal Services from any client, printers that are locally attached to the client workstation are automatically created for the Terminal Services session.

However, if you install a Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98 printer driver that is released after Windows 2000 was released, the printer may not be automatically created for the terminal session.

CAUSE

When a Microsoft Windows NT or Windows 2000 client creates a Terminal Services session, the driver is uploaded from the client computer to the server, and the printer is created. However, computers running Windows 95/98 do not work in the same way. Because Windows 2000 does not use the same drivers as Windows 95/98, a section in the %SystemRoot%\Inf\Ntprint.inf file is used to map the Windows 95/98 printer drivers to Windows 2000 drivers. This file contains mappings for printer drivers that exist at the time of Windows 2000 release.

Problems may occur when you are using a Windows 95/98 printer driver that is released after Windows 2000, because there is no mapping information for the printer driver in the Ntprint.inf file.

RESOLUTION

To support the automatic creation of printers using a new printer driver, you must manually add the mapping for the driver in the [Previous Names] section of the Ntprint.inf file. The following sample is an excerpt from this section:

[Previous Names]
"Apple LaserWriter v23.0" = "Apple LaserWriter"
"Apple LaserWriter II NT v47.0" = "Apple LaserWriter II NT"
"Apple LaserWriter II NTX v47.0" = "Apple LaserWriter II NTX"
"Apple LaserWriter IIf v2010.113" = "Apple LaserWriter IIf"

The left column contain the Windows 95/98 printer driver name. The right column contains the name of the Windows 2000 printer driver to use. To add Point and Print support for an unlisted driver, you must add the Windows 95/98 driver name and the Windows 2000 driver name you want to use for automatic creation of the printer.

For example, if the Hewlett-Packard (HP) LaserJet 8000-series printers were not supported and you wanted to use the Windows 2000 HP LaserJet 5Si driver, you would add the following line to the Ntprint.inf file:

HP LaserJet 8000 Series = HP LaserJet 5si

This would tell Windows 2000 to use the HP LaserJet 5Si driver when a client with an HP LaserJet 8000-series printer connects

MORE INFORMATION

For information about how to perform the same procedure for Citrix ICA clients, please click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q221509 How to Set Default Autocreated Printer with Terminal Server

Additional query words: terminalsvr rdp auto-create auto-creation

Keywords : kbprint
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb