printing issues

<p>We're running Empower2 Enterprise FR5 SP F in a citrix environment. Networked printers have been added to the LACEs and citrix servers using Empower's registering printers mechanism.</p><p></p><p>Users are seeing very strange printing behavior- sometimes printers are visible within Empower screens and sometimes they are not, they may be available from within one screen and not another, occassionally they select a printer and they cannot print at all from within Empower until the citrix servers are rebooted (receive the following error in the message center- "Couldn't get a good DC for printer - <a href="file://printserver/Rutherfordium">file://printserver/Rutherfordium</a>"). I've published other apps on the server and am able to view and print to all printers that have been added through the Windows OS. So it seems to be related to citrix, specific to Empower, and possibly print driver related.</p><p></p><p>A second issue related to printing has been documents printing out of order from Empower. </p><p></p><p>Has anyone else seen these issues? recommendations?</p>

Answers

  • Printers whether local or network should first be configured in Printers and Faxes with appropriate access granted. The printers should be registered for use by Empower using the Register Empower Node Printers tool. If a user has an ICA currently active they will need to logout of the session and login to access any newly added printers. The watersservice should not be enabled on a Citrix server.

  • Printing on Citrix can be a bit of a pain. Printing with Empower on Citrix WILL be a pain. It's an unfortunate side effect of how Empower handels printers. The only way I was able to make this work smoothly for the end users was to install each printer that was likely to be needed locally on each Citrix server as if the Citrx server were to be a print server itself. There is no need to share the printers. They just need to be there as local printers. Once they're set up, you can run the "Register Empower Node Printers" utility. If you have a lot of printers and a lot of Citrix servers, check out Microsoft's printer migration utility. It really saved me a lot of work.

    One potential "gotcha":

    Once installed, the printers may show up as being offline. If this happens, check the properties of each printer, on the Ports tab, Configure Port button. If the SNMP Status Enabled option is checked, you will have this problem. Simply uncheck that option and you should be fine.

    Good luck!