Hello,
I have an office setup as follows: Local office IP adress scheme 192.168.201.x. There is a Konica Minolta BizHub 282 printer connected to the 192.168.201.x network as well as around 10 workstations running Windows 7. There are also about 10 additional teleworkers WHO DO NOT NEED print access to the Minolta 282. All of their data is on a cloud server. I have them setup to first connect to the cloud server using a RRAS PPTP VPN and then to start an RDP session to the separate RDP server. The Konica Minolta works ??okay?? with the easy print services and until now, we have just dealt with the lack of features and the occasional print job that goes crazy and prints out 400 blank pages (btw, this is usually on Excel) or a job that cuts off the margins even when you have it set to "fit to page" (this usually happens in Adobe.) When I originally set this up, I tried loading the native Konica drivers on the server, but there was no joy because I couldn't get it to work using the native drivers. The problem at hand is a feature called "account track." This feature authenticates your print job by using an account code. If there is no code, the job just disappears. When I load the native Konica driver, the ability to turn on this feature is greyed out (see below):
When I use easy print, the codes seem to go through, but as I mentioned earlier, sometimes the print job just goes insane. After researching this, it seems to me that there are two ways to overcome this if we can't turn off the account track feature:
1) Overcome the driver problem. I've tried both of their current drivers without success: VXL and Visual Postscript. When I login to RDP, the (redirected) Konica 282 printer is listed, but when I try to print, it fails due to the missing account track code. I'm hoping that there is a registry hack to turn this feature on by default with the code or a driver version that works with RDP. They have a WHQL driver available, but it didn't work any better. Is there a way to report this issue to the WHQL labs? Maybe I can light a fire under Konica's rear end and motivate them to fix the driver.
2) I saw one discussion where the guy installed the printer out in the clouds as a local printer. He seemed to have a site-to-site VPN, not a client-to-site VPN, so this worked. Is there a way to do something similar when the customer connects to the VPN through standard "connect to workplace" setup? I tried pinging the Konica 282 from the server while logged into the VPN, but the printer could not be found.
3) I considered setting it up as a google cloud print prnter, but that would require everyone to setup a google account and add a layer of complexity.
Anyone else run into this and have a solution? If not, does anyone have any ideas on a solution or workaround?
Thanks,
Jeffery Smith