Disabling RDP redirected printers for VMware View Virtual Desktops

One of the common issues that I find fellow professionals bring up when we’re talking about VMware View desktop customizations and deployments is that if the environment is trying to extend the life of their existing desktops, users tend to complain about duplicate printers showing up in their Devices and Printers settings.  This issue is usually caused by redirected printers that are mapped on their physical desktop so when they log onto their View desktop, they automatically get redirected into their virtual desktop and most of the time, these printers are the same as the ones that are mapped in their virtual desktops.  To add to the duplicate printers, the default printer may also be set to a redirected printer mapped to the physical desktop.  This almost always causes confusion to the user and can potentially increase network traffic as print jobs get routed in between the virtual and physical desktop, over to the print server and finally to the printer.

**Note:  The policy mentioned below are for clients connecting via RDP protocol.  For PCoIP clients where printers are redirected via ThinPrint, see this post instead:

VMware View virtual desktop printers defaulting to thinprint redirected printers
http://terenceluk.blogspot.com/2012/10/vmware-view-virtual-desktop-printers.html

The solution to this issue is actually quite simple and that is to use Active Directory Group Policy to disable this redirection.  Start off by creating a new policy (or open up a policy you would like to add this setting to) and navigate to:

Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Terminal Services –> Client/Server data redirection

Within this note, enable the following two settings:

• Do not allow client printer redirection
• Do not set default client printer to be default printer in a session

Note that this policy is applied to the computer object so you need to apply it to the users’ physical desktops.

Hope this helps anyone looking for a quick answer to removing redundant printers showing up in their View desktops.