Remote printing using Remote Desktop over VPN

[Philip Herlihy]

I have a PC (XP Pro) in an office some miles away which has an
application which I want to use remotely. We have a VPN set up via the
broadband modem/router there, accessed through the native Windows
support (Vista business). The local printer (Sharp) is on the network
at 192.168.1.50. I can ping that from my local machine.

When connected to the remote XP box, I can run the application but I
can't see or ping the printer - even though I can "see" the "Fax
printer" on my local machine. I can't ping my local printer.

Using netstat on the remote XP box I could see that there was a
connection on port 3389 via 10.0.0.220 (which can only be the
termination of the VPN there). When I tried tracert I found it trying
to go out through the Default Gateway and unable to reach the printer or
my local PC at 192.168.1.101.

Of course I'd love to be able to print locally from the remote machine -
what would I have to do? I mused over the "route add" command-line
utility, wondering if that might do the trick, but I've no way of being
sure that the VPN will always terminate at the same IP address
(10.0.0.220) and I'd be getting into some cumbersome scripting to detect
it locally (although I don't rule that out).

I bet this is a common problem - hopeful for some smart advice!

[ThePro]

In the VPN connection properties, in the Network Tab, IPv4 properties,
Advanced, try unchecking "Use default gateway on remote network".

Did you try "Printers That Use Ports That Do Not Begin With COM, LPT, or USB
Are Not Redirected in a Remote Desktop or Terminal Services Session" (
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302361/en-us ) ?

[Bill Grant]

I think that you are using the wrong approach here.

The port 3389 connection is your remote desktop connection to the remote
computer. You should be using the settings in remote desktop to print to a
local machine rather than a remote one.

[Philip Herlihy]

Thanks - I'd already found I needed to do that as it had been preventing
me using RDC to connect to the XP machine from home! All the outgoing
traffic from the XP machine had been going through the remote machine.

[Philip Herlihy]

Yes, I'd realised that the 3389 connection was RDC. I'm not clear why
you think my approach is wrong (but I'm more than happy to entertain the
possibility!). I did configure the RDC settings to make the local
printer(s) available during a remote session, but only the local
Fax-printer is there. As the required printer is a stand-alone network
device, I'd have thought I should be able to see it through the VPN and
so print to it. However, I can't ping back to it from the remote
session, and was wondering if creating an explicit "route" might achieve
this. Of course, if there's a way of having RDC do this for me by
tweaking the printer or the RDC settings that would be a better option.

[Philip Herlihy]

Can't access the machine at the moment but I'll try this. From the soun
d of the article, all I need to do is add that DWORD and the printer
should be available on the remote session. Thanks!

It is a multi-function printer, so I won't change the port type. Either
way, I'd have thought there should be a way to access a device on the
local subnet from the remote session over a VPN??

That's the way I do it on my network to print to local TCP/IP printers from
a RDP session.

No. The local machine won't route packets from the remote network to the
local network. Your local computer is a VPN client, not server.

[Philip Herlihy]

The penny dropped: even if I did figure out a way to squirt packets
back up the VPN from the remote session, the local machine wouldn't know
how to route them to the printer. Thanks for the patient explanation!

[dennyd]

FYI, you only have the "Use default gateway on remote network" option if you created the VPN connection manually.

I would just use something like instead of trying to configure a VPN. It's a lot of more cost effective.

[kbofva]

PrinterRedirectionForRDPXPClientSide.msi
what is the script need to run this as an silent install so we do not affect our users?

[terminalprint]

You can install same driver on terminal server, and printer will map on server masine.
Microsoft have several problems with printer mapping, because of that easy solution is to buy some commercial solution for remotedesktop printing.
We are using TSPrint