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AddPrinter Utility Updated

Wednesday, 25 October 2006 by Michel Roth

Many driver problems in the Terminal Services environment revolve around poor multi-threaded performance, which in turn can cause Print Spooler instability. Problematic multi-threaded performance is usually exposed when multiple users connect to a Terminal Server simultaneously using the same print driver. Symptoms include the failure to autocreate client printers, increased thread count of the Printer Spooler and/or Citrix Print Manager services, and possibly the unresponsiveness and/or unexpected termination of these services (crashes).

The AddPrinter tool can be used to simulate multiple sessions autocreating printers using the same print driver. It can also be used to compare the following among various drivers:

CPU load incurred while creating a printer using a particular driver
Time required to successfully create a printer using a particular driver

Thomas Koetzing now reports form the iForum that a new the AddPrinter has been updated: "AddPrinter has got an awesome update! AddPrinter can now be used to really check if a printer driver works as expected in a Citrix environment. It can run different test to make sure the driver doesnt blow the system, Citrix Print Service or the spooler. I talked to Gary (Lead developer for the printing subsystem) and Citrix send the utility to the most known Printer vendors to test their print drivers."

Download AddPrinter 2.0b here.