Windows Server 2019 Essentials - Redirected Printers suddenly stop working

Question

Hello,
I have a Windows Server 2019 Essentials with External PCs accessing the Server through RDP,
The problem is that most of the times on the remote session the redirected printers suddenly stop printing after a few minutes or hours eventhough they show up on "Devices and Printers" as redirected, and it will only work again most of the times if i SignOut on the Remote Desktop session and SignIn again.
On the local PCs the printers always work without any problem.

What could be the issue? It is getting very frustrating.

Thank You,
Best regards

Answer 1

My symptoms were slightly different...the server default printer kept changing to "print to pdf." I turned off "Let Windows manage mt default printer?" (Settings > Devices > Printers and Scanners), then reset the default printer to the one I wanted, and it's been fine ever since.

Answer 2

I had the same issue in August 2023 with a customer on Windows 2019 Datacenter. Their RDP files were configured to always open our application, via a batch file, as the alternate shell. After making the following two changes I have not heard any complaints about the redirected printers suddenly failing (But maybe the customer has just stopped reporting the issue!): 1. Changed batch file to check for a running instance of the program and not load another instance if one was already running; 2. Changed our application to call WTSLogoffSession upon program exit, if running under RDP.
(Note: there are two other people doing the main management on this server. So, it is possible they changed something else without telling me. I had wanted to switch out the batch file with a Powershell script to use a different mechanism for checking for existing application and then bring it to the foreground. Also, upon program exit I was going to have Powershell do something like a WTSLogoffSession. But the other two people didn't want to do it that way.)