I have seen a couple of threads regarding this, but in frustration of being ignored by MS Pro-support i post anyway.
As we have started to upgrade to MS Server 2012 R2 on several of our customers, we are starting to see a pattern regarding the 2012 R2 when Print Management services is installed and network printers are shared from that server.
For all of the customers where we have experienced this problem, the shared printers are deployed automatically to the users through Group Policy, and are processed during user logon on RDS servers.
Symptoms we are experiencing are as follows:
Default printer is not set properly, either by policy during logon or if the user tries manually once logged in. If the users logs off and on again, we find that the default printer setting has either changed to a different printer, or the icon
is missing from the printer that should be default. HOWEVER, if you right-click the printer, it is clearly marked as default in the context menu.
When that happens, third-party applications like Adobe Reader are unable to print PDF's, and we also have another software which is unable to print labels. MS Office programs are unaffected though.
The only solution that might resolve the problem for the user is to manually remove the shared printer and then re-add it again. But the problem will return upon next log off/on again.
This problems as surfaced on all customers we have 2012 R2 as print server so far, regardless of printer brands, models, types, drivers versions, number of shared printers and physical network setup.
When changing print server back to 2012 or 2008 R2, everything is fixed instantly.
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I have seen a couple of possible fixes on this floating around on the web, but none as worked for us. As for installing the printers locally on the RDS servers, that is not a viable solution. Some of our customers have 70+ network printers and are running RDS farms of 10 servers. Managing 70 printers * 10 manually is not an acceptable solution.
What ANNOYS me the most about this is the ignore i am receiving from MS PRO-support.
Does anyone know of any official solution from MS on this....or unofficial for that matter?