Understanding Printing Problems

1. Printer drivers are not written to be used on Terminal Servers
   
   Finally, though, a lot of printer manufacturers see the necessity of developing their drivers to be used on Terminal Servers. But there are still printer drivers which are written for usage on a workstation by one user at the time. Printer drivers not written for Terminal Servers are, most of the time, not capable of handling so many printing jobs. When the driver becomes overwhelmed, this can cause the spooler services to crash, or even worse the operating system will blue screen.
   
2. Printjobs use a lot of bandwidth
   
   Printjobs normally consume a large amount of bandwidth. This is not specifically related to Terminal Server environments, but most times it is a bigger issue when using Terminal Services. Because Terminal Services are used a lot when users need access from co-locations, home locations or supplier/customer offices where the bandwidth is limited to the location where the Terminal Servers are. Within environments with a small amount of bandwidth and lots of printjobs these jobs can use the full amount of bandwidth. This actually means that users are not able to work anymore because Terminal Server related traffic is brought to a stand still by the printer traffic.
   
3. Version conflicts by third party drivers
   
   Often (especially with new printers) the Windows operating system doesn’t have the driver for that printer. To use all the functionality of that printer the driver made by the manufacturer must be used. It may happen that one new driver overwrites a DLL also used by another driver. It may also happen that the printers using the pre-existing DLL do not function anymore. Therefore every new printer driver must be tested extensively before using it in a production environment.
   
4. All printer drivers need to be available on all Terminal Servers
   
   The most important rule in the Terminal Server world is that all servers hosting the same applications must be 100% identical. This rule also applies to the printer drivers. It is a difficult job to keep all related files to printer drivers identical on all servers especially if you have lots of printer drivers.

Taken from MSterminalservices.org