Normal user cannot add a network printer on a Terminal Server

By default Windows 2000 and 2003 terminal services does not allow a non administration account to add a printer when they log onto a remote desktop connection. When they do attempt to install a printer the user gets the following error message.

You do not have sufficient access to your computer to connect to the selected printer.

To allow users to add a network printer either manually or via a logon script you will need to do the following:

1. Open up local security policy by clicking “Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy“.
2. Open Local Policies
3. Open Security Policies
4. On the Right hand side double-click “Prevent users from installing printer drivers”
5. Click on Disabled and then Ok and then Close the Local Security Policy window.
6. Reboot the computer

Apparently you can do a gpupdate /force (win 2003) or a secedit /REFRESHPOLICY MACHINE_POLICY /enforce (windows 2000) instead of rebooting but I have not tried that myself and its been just as easy to reboot the server.

You can also set this setting on the Terminal Servers OU through group policy if you have multiple Terminal Servers to save time.

Remotely enabling remote desktop

You can enable remote desktop on a Windows 2003 server machine remotely by completing the following steps:

Connect to the remote servers registry by Opening up the registry editor on your machine (Click Start -> Run -> type regedit and click ok) and clicking File -> Connect to Network Registry

Type in the remote servers name and click Ok.

Now navigate to the following key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server and change the fDenyTSConnections (REG_DWORD) from 1 (Remote Desktop disabled) to 0 (Remote Desktop enabled) as shown below.

On the servers I’ve done this to so far there was no reboot necessary. Though in your situation you may need to run shutdown -m \\remoteservername -r if you still cannot connect to your server after this has been done.

The Integrated Remote Console is unavailable, it is already in use by a different client.

When using the integrated remote console on a HP Blade Server and you get disconnected for whatever reason you get the error message “The Integrated Remote Console is unavailable; it is already in use by a different client.”.

This is a common problem and is apparently working as intended, though it can be annoying. To fix this you need to turn on “Remote console acquire” within the iLO of the system.

Log into iLO and select Remote Console / Settings
There you will see settings that allow you to enable:
- Remote Console Acquire
Acquire allows you to terminate the current remote console session to attach a new one. The current user is notified.

You can also click on Remote Console Share but you will need to purchase another license key for the functionality of having multiple users using the remote console at the same time.