local printers do not get attached through vmview...

[Yikes1232011101]

I have a couple guys who have laptops with local printers at home.  They use vmview to connect to a virtual pc, but their printers do not come through.  Even though I have added the drivers in the virtual pc.  Any ideas?  thanks.

first time using forums.

Joe.

[mittim12]

Welcome to the forums Joe.     have you attempted to utilize the Thinprint capabilities of View to  map the printers over?  

[Yikes1232011101]

hi, where would I find the thin print utility on the View admin website?   I don't see a tab or a setting for that...

[mittim12]

Check out page 100 of the install guide, http://www.vmware.com/pdf/view-46-installation.pdf.    It will give you the information but to sum it up for you.

[Yikes1232011101]

yes, I see that.  But his printer is attached via usb to his local machine and yet I don't see it on his virtual machine througth vmview.  Are there any other configurations that need to done so I can see it.  When he uses only remote desktop to connect to his vm, the printer appears.  but not through vmview.

thanks.

[mittim12]

If you go to a command line and switch over to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware tools you can run tpautoconnect -d and then tpautoconnect -v.   This will manually map the printers.  If that works correctly then we would need to figure out why it's not doing it on login.  If it doesn't work then hopefully the output would give us some type of information.

[Yikes1232011101]

actually I just noticed that on the vm and the esx host, it says, " host does not support passthrough configuration".  And I cannot add a usb controller to the vm.  I guess this is the problem?

[mittim12]

You should not need to add a USB controller for thinprint to work.  If it's a USB printer you could try the USB redirection feature of VMware View which only requires that the drivers be in the VM.  

[Yikes1232011101]

ok, I ran those commands.  I have attached a picture of what I got. I hope this helps?

[mittim12]

Seems to pick up the printers fine it just can't connect.  Are you sure they have an updated fully installed View client on their home PC?    What OS are they running? 

[Yikes1232011101]

win 7 local, and xp virtual

[mittim12]

I would reinstall the agent and make sure the Virtual Printing option is selected.  

[Yikes1232011101]

when I reinstall the vm view client, I only see usb redirection and no virtual printing option.  Or is there a different client?

thanks for your help.

[mittim12]

Just make sure they have the latest client installed on their laptops and reinstall the agent on the guest VM.   The virtual printing option will be available on the guest VM.