Printers from dead seasions are not killed by terminal server   

Hi all,

We approx 15 PCs from 5 remote offices connected to our central office by 
using W2K Terminal Server. All the users of the same office use the same 
user/password to login to the terminal server. Each office has at least one 
printer that is shared accross all PCs of the office. By using the trick of 
mapping the shared printer to a local port, they can see the shared printer 
('cause they all are login with the same credentials), and print. For our 
operation it is vital that some priviledged central office users can reach 
the printers of all remote connected users. For that we included these users 
in the "Power Users" group. Then they see all the printers connected to the 
terminal server. Such configuration works but we have some operational 
troubles. When a Power User tries to identify the apropriate remote office's 
printer often he finds the printers duplicated, or four times. We have found 
that
1.- Printers from sessions not listed in the Terminal Server Manager (i.e. 
sessions have been killed automatically because of inactivity, or the users 
have logged out gently) are listed on the Control Panel's Printers folder.
2.- If one office has a printer Printer1 on the PC1, and the PC2 has the 
same printer mapped to a local port, the power user see:
Printer1/PC1/Session x (The printer on PC1)
__PC1_Printer1/PC2/Session y (The printer on PC1 mapped to PC2)
It causes some confussion but both printers works. But if for some reason 
PC1 had a previous session now killed but the printer is still listed on the 
control panel, then power users see the same printer 4 times. Two of them 
are inoperable.
The main problem we identify is W2K terminal server doesn't kill properly 
printers from dead sessions. Not always, but in some circumstances it does'n 
do that.
Has anybody see that behaviour?
Is it any way to avoid that?

Thanks in advance
Sammy

date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:03:35 -0500   author:   SammyBar