When a user logs on, the default printer is set by a Windows Scripting Host
5.6 loginscript. So far so good, all Windows application work perfectly on
the set default printer (and others when selected). Users can not change
their default printer because they don't have sufficient rights to do so.
But in Word 2000/XP is a macro that's custom made for creating official
documents. This macro does time registration, case numbering and much more.
It also makes it possible to print the document by using a special function
to outline the text available for the specific documents.
When this macro prints it uses some HKCU printer settings
(HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\Device) for
retrieving the default printer. If this key is set in the login script all
works fine, but if the default Windows printer is changed by the script,
this key gets an empty or incomplete value.
This key also changes when the server is rebooted or a networked printer is
changed (without changing the default printer).
Always thought (and with me also the software engineers of the third party)
that this key was user specific and changes are stored when a user logs off.
But this is not true on a Terminal Server. (On a domaincontroller with
roaming profiles it works fine however).
So that's our - read our customers - problem.
Jeroen