Remote printing

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beachbum

Limp Gawd
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Oct 12, 2003
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I have someone who lives about 100 miles away, does work by remote desktop into a computer where I am at. One problem, printing.
She would like to print stuff from the remote computer to her home printer. It's not as simple as copy paste, email and print at home, she needs (or it'll likely be me setting this up) to somehow setup the computer on my end to print to her printer 100 miles away. Sounds strange, but I know it's possible, or is it?
 
Yes, make sure you have a printer installed on your local machine then in RD options check "Printers" under "Local Resources". It works, just kinda iffy sometimes
 
Ummm, yeah.
That all went over my head. Trying to print over the internet. Not LAN, WAN.
Maybe some more in depth instructions. Google has failed to offer any advice or tutorial how to do this.

Bassically the person has a USB printer hooked up to their computer, they are remoting to another computer, far away...over the internet, and they'd like to print something from this remote printer to the computer that they are using to remote.
I know they can set the printer to be shared, but from there I don't know what to do.
In the printer setting it shows an option for an internet printer, and an example: http://server_name/printers/share_name/.printer I'm lost.
 
Well after you share the printer in RDP you just got to print as normal, but you remote printer should show up in the list.
 
ok let me get this straight

Home User system (with Printer) ----RDP---- ((Internet)) ---- Work System (hosting RDP)

you want to be able to use "home system" via "RDP" to control "work system"

While the user on "home system" uses the "work system" via "RDP" you want to be able to print via "RDP" to the printer on located on the "Home system" where the user is sitting?
 
I've had this issue come up before. It works great when both the local and remote system are running the same OS, ie WinXP.

First make sure that the "Printers" checkbox is selected under the "Local Resources" tab.
rdp1yl6.jpg


Second make sure that the remote system has the printer drivers installed for the printer you are using on your local system.

When you connect your home (local) computer to your work (remote) computer it installs the drivers on the remote computer for the printer that you have on your local computer.

If those drivers are not available you will not be able to print back to your local computer via your remote connection.

If the drivers are not available you should have an event in your event log that states as such.

And that event (on the remote computer) would look like this:
rdp2nv0.jpg


Once you install the required drivers on the remote computer and connect you should have an available printer that will be labeled as such, see below:
rdp3mf4.jpg


Anthony-XpPc is my home (local) computer in this example. The above screen is what you would see once connected to your work (remote) computer.

Make sense? Also on the off chance that your remote & local OS's are different let me know and I can show you how to fix that. And yes it involves some custom INF creation.
 
I see you use terminal services... how many users? what hardware do you use (system and switch, vpn, firewall etc)

what internet connection do you have, what is the bandwidth usage like?
 
FromTheLou, that is currently what the person is doing.
I just got the "memo" and essentially the "home" printer is not showing up on the "remote" comptuer, that's the problem. Now this changes everything, seems like it could be a simple fix? Just need to get that home computer to show up in RDP.

Connection is through a T-1.
 
Jay_oasis said:
I see you use terminal services... how many users? what hardware do you use (system and switch, vpn, firewall etc)

what internet connection do you have, what is the bandwidth usage like?
Click to expand...

I haven't supported a TS server for customers in a couple years, but when I did we had 15 users via 1.1 SDSL without breaking a sweat. But it will all depend on the application(s) running on the TS. My remote customers were using a very limited graphic cage card printing program. Other than that all they used it for was Outlook and data entry.

Once they moved to other applications and had a need a "local" server I just set up another DC in the domain and used DFS over the WAN.

VPN was a Cisco Pix 501 on each end and as I stated earlier the remote site was 1.1 SDSL and headquarters was 2 2.3 SDSL lines bonded together.

As well I'm sure the bandwidth requirement goes up once you move from RDP 5.0 to 5.1/5.2.

beachbum said:
FromTheLou, that is currently what the person is doing.
I just got the "memo" and essentially the "home" printer is not showing up on the "remote" comptuer, that's the problem. Now this changes everything, seems like it could be a simple fix? Just need to get that home computer to show up in RDP.

Connection is through a T-1.
Click to expand...

As noted above check the event viewer on the "remote" (work) computer and see if there is any events in the System log that match the second screenshot I posted.

Normally the reason why the printer that is connected to the "local" (home) computer isn't showing up when connected is because it doesn't have the required drivers installed on the "remote" (work) computer.


Also are the OS's the same? What make/model of printer does the user have connected to their "local" (home) computer?
 
Well that must be what it is, driver related.

Both systems are running XP Pro. I am not 100% on what make and model pritner, but I think it's one of those (USB) HP DeskJets.
 
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