Redirected Printers on Windows Servers

“Help! I’m a systems administrator and I notice when I log into my server that I see familiar-looking print queues that say (redirected 2) after the printer name. Do I need to worry about these, how does PaperCut work with these printers, and can I remove them?” On a Windows server, you might notice printers with names like “LaserPrinter3000 (redirected 2)”. The “(redirected 2)” part after the printer name indicates this printer was created through a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session to the server and was “redirected” from the user’s workstation. Additionally, when trying to delete one of these printers, you may see this error: “Printer cannot be removed. Access is denied.” What Are Redirected Printers? Redirected printers are created when a user connects to a server via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). When printer redirection is enabled, the user’s local printers are mapped to the server, allowing them to print to their local printers while connected remotely. This is the default, out-of-the-box configuration for RDP. This might be very useful if a user wants to print something to a local (USB) printer connected to their workstation while connected to a server. For PaperCut users, these printers: Are not automatically tracked or accounted for by PaperCut MF. Are not shared via Mobility Print or our other print enablement solutions. Do not affect PaperCut features in most environments. Should not be confused with a similarly-worded PaperCut function called print job redirection (for load balancing or Find-Me printing) . Why disable Printer Redirection? Our official guidance is to disable printer redirection where possible. We’ve seen the Windows print spooler service crash because some print drivers are not compatible with printer redirection. In the case of PaperCut, when an administrator logs in, a new printer object is created on the server, causing PaperCut to reenumerate the list of printers and to stop tracking print jobs for a fraction of a second. In a small environment this generally isn’t an issue but in an enterprise scale environment this could lead to an untracked print job. So for simplicity and reliability, our best-practice advice is to disable printer redirection. Preventing Redirected Printers To stop these printers from appearing, you can configure Group Policy to disable printer redirection. Open the ** ** Local Group Policy Editor . Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Printer Redirection. Locate the policy Do not allow client printer redirection. Enable the policy. Tracking Redirected Printers By default, PaperCut does not track redirected printers created during Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) sessions. You can configure PaperCut to track these printers by modifying the print-provider.conf file which might be handy in environments where users remote onto servers but still need to print. Just be warned that this is not a common configuration. The exact steps to do so are documented in our article Print enablement & management in distributed working environments .