Recently installed a new Windows 2008 R2 server that was to be used primarily as a Remote Desktop Server (New term formerly known as Terminal Server). All was good except users could not print remotely. Microsoft has done a good job with the printer redirection function and all of the remote printers appeared without adding the drivers on the W2008 machine. The problem was that if you printed to the redirected printer, nothing got send to the remote printer.
After digging a bit I found this post from Microsoft that describes and resolves the issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968605/en-us
Symptoms are:
When you use a RDP client or Terminal Service client from a Windows XP SP2 or later version, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008 using RDP 6.0 or 6.1 clients into a Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server running in Application Mode. The XPS file is being sent back over to the client. You might see it spool on the server then disappear or the job never gets back to the client.the XPS file is being sent back over to the client. You might see it spool on the server then disappear or the job never gets back to the client.
The cause is listed as:
Besides having the role of Terminal Services in Application Mode installed, you also installed the role of a Domain Controller (DC)
When a DC is being configured as a TS server, there is a standard warning message which states:
“Installing Terminal Services on a Domain Controller is not recommended. Do you want to continue?”
Yes not recomended, ut in this case users primarly (and only domain controller was a SBS2003 server and client may switch everything to the new server at some point. For redundancy we installed the second Domain Controller on the W2008R2 machine.
Solution:
1. Click Start, search for cmd.exe
2. Right click on cmd.exe
3. Click on ‘Run as Administrator’
4. Type “C:\” w/o the quotation marks and then Press Enter.
5. Type CD\Windows\System32\Spool and then Press Enter.
6. Type Cacls.exe PRINTERS /e /g users:C and then Press Enter.
7. Restart the computer
When the users log back in everything works.