Links to sources for Terminal Server printing issues/fixes

Microsoft Technet - Configure settings for mapping client devices - link

Brian Madden - The Ultimate Guide to Terminal Server Printing - Design and Configuration - link

Brother Printers - Universal print drivers for Terminal Servers and Citrix - link

MS Terminal Services Blog - Windows Terminal Services Printing - link

Microsoft - Terminal Server Printer Redirection Wizard Tool - link

Microsoft - Choosing the right printer drivers - link

KTS - Terminal Server category - link

I recently experienced an issue where my Motorola Q9c from Verizon was hanging up for 1 - 2 minutes when I would try to unlock the screen.  Normally, you press the unlock soft key and the screen will display a prompt to press the * key to complete the unlock process.  With the problem I experienced, it was hanging before showing me that prompt and my phone would be unusable for about 1 - 2 minutes.  After this happened, I checked my task manager and found the “Text Messages” process consuming a good chunk of resources.  I forced this to quit and my phone would be fine until I wrote another text messsage and that process respawned. 

After trying a few things, I found that this issues was actually caused by the text prediction feature and the size of the text prediction history cache.  If you are having the same problem, try turning this feature off, or at least clearing the history.  Here’s how:

1. Select “Text Input Settings” from the main settings menu.
2. To Disable this feature, clear the “Suggest words when typing” option
3. To clear the history, access the menu by using the right soft key and select “Clear Input History”

I recently experienced a strange issue with a client where office documents from Word and Excel (.doc and .xls) would open very slowly when double clicked.  If you first opened the respective application and then selected the document from the open menu, it would open almost instantly.  After exhaustive research, I found the issue was related to the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) settings for those applications.  More on DDE can be found here.

The corrective action was to modify the “Application used to perform this action” string in the DDE settings.  Here it is step-by-step:

1. Open folder options from within the control panel.
2. Select the tab for file types.
3. From the list, select the document extension you are having trouble with (.doc or .xls)
4. Click the advanced button
5. Append the string “%1″ including the quotes to the end of the existing “Application used to perform this action” string.  If the existing string ends with a “/dde” remove that.
6. Click OK and try again.

With the newer versions of Backup Exec and Exchange 2007, Granular Recovery Technology (GRT), a requirement of the Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects needs to be downloaded and installed on the Exchange/Media server. Microsoft has updated the Mapi and CDO to 1.2.1 to include Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. 64bit servers have no problem installing.

Link to download.

Following the installation of a printer driver on at  Windows 2003 Terminal Server, it’s good practice to check out the registry to make sure the driver is not using an unsupported Monitor or Print Processor.

To check for the presence of a print monitor:

1) Open Regedit

2) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3

3) locate the newly installed driver by name, click on the key (folder)

4) In the right hand pane you will see a series of settings,  look for the Monitor string

5) The Monitor data field should be clear as print monitors are not supported in a TS environment, if you see anything listed there, delete it.

For the print processor:

1) The printer should been connected at least once to the Terminal Server in order for it to show up in the list at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers

2) Navigate to that key in the registry and locate the printer by name in the list

3) In the right hand pane you will see a series of settings,  look for the Print Processor string

4) The only supported Terminal Server print processor is the default,  WinPrint - if the driver you installed is using a different print processor,  replace it with WinPrint.

Once you’ve made these changes, test the printer to make certain it functions via TS.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332342(EXCHG.80).aspx

Situation: Exchange 2007 has a contact (not a mailbox) within the GAL that end-user uses to email instead of using the actual non-exchange email address. The non-exchange (network solutions) user does not get attachment sent (Word, Excel, etc.), but does get a winmail.dat file attached.

Fix: Launch Exchange Management Console, goto Recipient Configuration/Mail Contact container, open up contact you’re having the issue with, on the ‘general’ tab change the ‘Use MAPI rich text format’ drop-down to ‘Never’ and test.

Compatibility and requirements:

• The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)
• Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost
• The device should have an access time of 1 ms or less
• The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device
• The device must have at least 235 MB of free space
• NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported
• The initial release of ReadyBoost supports one device
• The recommended amount of flash memory to use for Windows ReadyBoost acceleration is one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed in your computer

I recently came across a client’s backup that was completing successfully daily but not flushing the transaction logs for Exchange as it should.  In the job properties of Backup Exec, the Exchange section declares that it will perform a full backup and flush the comitted logs but it simply never happens.

After some research, Veritas article 280659 had the answer…and it was a simple one.  In the job properties, review the options under Advanced Open File and make sure the option “Process Logical Volumes for backup one at a time” is not checked.   As its explained in the article, if this is unchecked, Backup Exec will use a different open file option (VSS) for the Exchange logs to allow it to flush them afterwards. 

I recently came across a PC that prompted me for the SKU011.CAB file everytime I ran an Office application.  The verions of Office it listed was Office Professional 2003 so I popped in my Office 2003 Pro CD and tried to use that to replace the file.  I was unable to find SKU011.CAB on the CD and after checking the CD Key in use discovered that Office 2003 Pro Enterprise was the actual version installed.  Not having an Enterprise CD, I thought I was stuck.

Then I found the Local Installation Source Tool from Microsoft and was saved.  I downloaded the tool and used the “Delete and disable LIS” option to remove the local installation source and after the next attempt to start and Office App I was off and running.

You can get the tool here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=10fa7aa3-695b-42c3-9045-b812ba0fed3e&displaylang=en