Most Important Terminal Server Registry Keys and Values

Posted by Benny Tritsch on December 10, 2003 – updated on May 31, 2005

[Introduction] [General] [System and User] [Default User] [Folders] [Printers] [Network]

Printer Settings

Connecting and managing printers for terminal servers is a very complex topic. This fact is also quite evident in the registry. The general configuration of the printers used and the associated driver information are located under HKLM \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Print.

You will find references to the currently installed printer drivers of the terminal server under HKLM \SYSTEM \ControlSet001 \Control \Print \Environments \Windows NT x86 \Drivers \Version-3 \<Printer name>. This correlates with the files under %SystemRoot% \system32 \spool \drivers \w32x86 \3. The user-specific settings for the printers are located in the registry under HKCU \Printers.

If you do not want to install printer drivers from sources that might not be controllable, you have the option of choosing a binding path. This path is called a "trusted printer driver path". To configure this behavior, you need to add the following keys in HKLM \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Control \Print \Providers \LanMan Print Services \servers.

It is important that the structure of the \\Server name\Share folder mirrors the %System-Root% \system32 \spool \drivers \w32x86 folder. If all the data was properly entered, printer drivers can be installed only from the predefined source, allowing complete control of the printer drivers used.

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