I want the blues – Die Event ID 1111 Die!

What

I’ve written about this before, in regards to having clear (anal retentive much?) event logs and the technique was different in Windows Server 2008 R2 and earlier. I just can’t stand having to ignore a bunch of red critical errors, especially when they aren’t critical – and more importantly, I don’t think people should learn to ignore the red – Never Cry Wolf and all that, you know?

The technique in Windows Server 2012 is a little different (well, okay, this was supported in 2008 R2 as well but we just never did it that way typically I suppose…)

So What

Red/Critical Event ID 1111’s like the below are laziness and cause us to waste time sifting through them while we get to real/current/valid errors. These errors exist because Terminal Services/Remote Desktop wants to try and map our local printers for us, when we connect to the server. This is desired if it were a full blown/proper terminal server but for the rest of us (And us SharePoint admins), we use Remote Desktop Connection (RDP) to “manage” our servers.

If you, like me, never plan on having anyone map their printers when simply managing a server, there are a few ways you can avoid the errors…

 

 

Error Text is typically something like “Event ID 1111” and “Driver X required for printer Y is unknown. Contact the administrator to install the driver before you log in again”.

Now What

Option 1

When establishing your Remote Desktop Connection with the client Software (MSTSC.EXE), you could disable “client redirection” before you connect, like so:

 

Meh, there are a few reasons why this isn’t ideal…

1. If you forget to do this, from some machine you connect from, your red errors come back
2. No central control of this problem, you have to communicate this to everyone and have them remember to do it

 

Option 2 (and 3)

The other option is group policy. The reason I say options 2 and 3 is that you can either do this locally on the server or distributed via Group Policy Management in Active Directory to a number of servers at once (except for your real terminal servers folks!).

Here’s how…

• Open GPEDIT.MSC locally on the server (option 1) or Group Policy Management on your DC (option 2)
  • I’m assuming you know how to create a GPO and place it appropriately
• Edit the following policy:
  • Computer Configuration –> Policies –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Remote Desktop Services –> Remote Desktop Session Host –> Printer Redirection
• If you are in a hurry to see it in effect on a server, go to a command prompt and run GPUPDATE /FORCE (or just wait for the policy to arrive)