X Connect to Printer
To
reduce the number of GPOs and increase efficiency I recently switched from
deploying printers through a user-based (per department) GPO to deploying them
from a computer-based (all workstations) GPO.
Shortly
afterwards XenDesktops with Windows 7 had the printers, but they were faded out
and "offline". The event log showed Print Service Event 513:
Group Policy was
unable to add per computer connection "Printer". Error code 0x6xba.
This can occur if the name of the printer connection is incorrect, or the print
spooler cannot contact the print server.
Attempting
to add printers manually produces a vague "Windows
cannot connect to the printer." error with error code
0x00000002.
The
issue was present with VDA 7.1, 7.6, and 7.8 so upgrading the VDA didn't fix
it.
The
temporary work around was to stop the Citrix Print Manager service,
restart the Print Spooler service, and then we were able to add the
printers manually, but this has to be repeated every time a reboot
occured.
(Note:
Restarting the print spooler also restarts the Citrix
Print Mgmt. service, however this doesn't produce the desired result.
The Citrix Print Manager service has to be stopped first, then
the Print Spooler service has to be restarted.)
I have not seen the issue on Windows 8.1 or 10.
I
was told later from Citrix Support that "GPOs are not recommended for
deploying printers to VDAs. Only Citrix Policies should be used to deploy
printers."
Resolution
It's
not enough to just remove the computer-based GPO.
Verify
that the computer-based GPO is not applied to the master image, or exclude the
master image from the GPO if needed and verify that it is not applied.
Open
Print Management on the master image and select All Drivers in the left side
navigation.
Right
click, Remove Driver Package, and delete all print drivers except the 2 default
Microsoft Drivers, the 2 default Citrix drivers, and any PDF printers.
If
the print spooler has the driver locked…
Open Services. Stop
the Citrix Print Manager service.
Right click the
driver, Remove Driver Package, then leave it on the screen where you have the
option to Delete the driver.
Restart the Print
Spooler service. Wait for it to stop, and while it is starting up
delete the driver. It's tricky to time it right and it may have to be done
several times before it works.
Restart and verify
that printers can now be added without having to mess with any services.
Optionally, manually add the printers to install the drivers now.
At this point either
switch back to user-based GPO printer deployment, or from the DDC under Policy,
use the Citrix Policy called Session Printers to deploy printers. The Citrix
policy is essentially a user-based GPO, however the assignments make it easier
to deploy to delivery groups instead of OUs.
Once the policy has
been set up you must open a command prompt on the DDC and run gpupdate /force
to push the changes to the VDAs.
