Process Monitor Troubleshooting custom print driver, print spooler - printing

Our users upgraded from Windows 7 to 10.
When they try to print using a custom print driver they get this error
The document Print Document, owned by User, failed to print on printer TEST-PRINT. Try to print the document again, or restart the print spooler.
Data type: NT EMF 1.008. Size of the spool file in bytes: 628788. Number of bytes printed: 12900. Total number of pages in the document: 6. Number of pages printed: 0.
Client computer: Devcomp. Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 2147500037. Unspecified error
Some of my observations: Internally we cannot reproduce this error internally. I have a windows 10 surface and also tried on a windows 8 machine. Our support tried it here too.
The customer can reproduce the issue without. The issue happens for some documents on some workstations. The PDF is generated from a 3rd party application for tellers. The customer saves the pdf from this signature desktop application to a PDF and uses our print driver to print to the our application.
Our print driver converts the file to PCL and sends it to the subscriber for further processing.
I can provide more info if needed regarding print driver. First of is it a problem with the print driver?
All the users who upgraded from windows 7 to a windows 10 laptop can see the issue happening. There are some windows 10 workstations that print just fine. Could it be something with the group policy or some registry settings. If I were to compare the registry or policies on the workstation that prints and the one that fails what would be the settings I need to look for? The customer's IT says that there is no difference between the two workstations except that it’s the production workstation that fails. Typical response nothing different but it doesn't work.
We also tried to disable “render print jobs on the client workstation” but this didn’t seem to make difference. I am happy to try any suggestions you’ll have.
I am looking for ideas of what kind of research and where should I start troubleshooting.
I won't be troubled if anyone chooses to vote the question down that I didn't do any research since I really don't know where to start. I am a .NET developer not a windows driver expert or systems admin.
Process Monitor Good File. The file gets created.
Create file success, create file name not found and finally create file succcess
Bad File: Create file success, create file name not found. The last create file is not called by the print.exe driver.

This solved my problem. Thanks Papercut!.
https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/FixingPrintSpoolerCrashes
https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/EnableAdvancedPrintingFeatures

Related

Recent Microsoft patch breaks UWP printing to serial printers

Recently Microsoft deployed some security patch that has broken UWP printing to serial printers. These are printers that interface to Windows through either a USB serial port or a Bluetooth serial port. Symptoms -
Upon printing, a print notification appears:
Print Notification
Error printing on [printer name]
The printer couldn't print [print job name]
The print job appears in the printer queue with "Error - Printing" as status. Restarting the print job from the queue causes the page to successfully print, however having to restart every print job is not an acceptable solution for any application.
In the Windows event viewer, under Custom Views, Administrative Events, the following error is logged at the time of print failure:
"The document Print Document, owned by [user], failed to print on printer [printer name]. Try to print the document again, or restart the print spooler.
Data type: XPS2GDI. Size of the spool file in bytes: 182104. Number of bytes printed: 0. Total number of pages in the document: 1. Number of pages printed: 0. Client computer: [\COMPUTERNAME]. Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 3012. No printers were found."
I have duplicated this bug using the Windows Universal printing example from Microsoft
I have duplicated the issue on multiple PCs, running Windows 10 21H1, 21H2, and Windows 11. I believe the issue to be related to some recent security fix deployed by Microsoft but I cannot identify which one is the cause. The problem did not exist until recently.
Are other people seeing this? Does anyone know which KB patch is the culprit? Is there any fix of which anyone is aware?
Here is the fix. The fix takes care of both Bluetooth and serial printing issue in Windows with the symptoms as described above. In an elevated command prompt:
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers" /v {CA791BB3-9742-4A0F-87B8-B3C4B1065856} /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
After issuing this command, reboot the PC. The fix works for both Windows 10 and 11.
I’m hopeful that Microsoft is going to patch the issue in the near future.

Print jobs print locally but not through cloud print

We have used Google Cloud Print Service for a few years now, very successfully. Periodically we have issues with print jobs failing, where restarting the Cloud Print Service and the Print Spooler will fix it. That is not the case today.
Today, I am able to print directly to the printer, both from my computer and from the server where we host Google Cloud Print Service. When I attempt to print from Google Cloud Print, I see the print job appear in the queue on the server, and then disappear, and in the Cloud Print queue it simply says "error" with no details on what is happening.
I restarted the print service with logging enabled, attempted to print again, and checked the debug log, with no details present. I'm stumped.
EDIT: After finding the correct debug log, I see this:
CP_CONNECTOR: Job failed (spool failed)
Has anyone dealt with this before, or know of a solution?
Things I have already tried:
Re-connecting Cloud Print Service to our Google account
Re sharing all printers
Reinstalling Cloud Print Service
Restarting the server
Reinstalling printers
After doing many many things, and finally getting Google support on the line, we determined it was a glitch in the Cloud Print Service. The work around, which I was unaware of, and the reason I'm posting this answer, was to use the Chrome Connector.
You can get to that by visiting chrome://devices and then sharing the printers through that form, which looks identical to the one that you get with the Cloud Print Service. I recommend clearing your printer list from Cloud Print first, so you don't get confused.
Once you've shared them, you can then share the printer through Cloud Print just as you would have before.
The only caveat, and the reason this is a work around and not a fix, is that you have to maintain an open Chrome session, meaning you have to keep chrome open for the printers to work. That's fine for us, as there is always a chrome tab open on the server anyway, but it may not work for you long-term.
I have installed the Beta version of chrome, and it seems to resolve the issue. I had this issue on 3 of my 11 servers. All where running stable versions. It was odd that only 3 where not allowing google to print. Once I installed the 64bit beta version, I was able to print. As long as the server was running the Version 53, people could print. It did not matter if someone had a version 52 on there computer. Hope this helps.

access trouble when controlling remote mac with AppleScript

I'm new to all this programming stuff, but trying to learn. I've had moderate success, but feel like it's more accidental than intentional. I'd appreciate help learning and understanding AppleScript in particular and networking, automation and programing in general.
Here's the environment: Almost all Apple with two Minis, a couple of laptops and various iOS devices including an AppleTV. The network consists of an Apple Airport Extreme, and an older D-Link switch I rescued (with permission) from the recycle bin at work. There are three Foscam wi-fi cameras as well. One of the Mini's (named Dora) is acting as a file server running Yosemite and the OS X Server application with a growing RAID 1 array for media storage.
What I’d like to be able to do is to run a single AppleScript from my laptop (Adam’s Macbook) that does the following:
Launch the application iCamSource on Adam’s Macbook
Change “Require Password to Wake” to true on Adam’s Macbook
Quit iTunes on Adam’s Macbook if it’s running
Start the current ScreenSaver locking Adam’s Macbook
Quit iTunes on Dora if it’s running
Start the current ScreenSaver on Dora if it’s not already running thereby locking Dora
I’d also like to have a single script on Adam’s Macbook that reverses these actions.
I have been able to launch iCamSource, set “Require Password to Wake” to true and start the ScreenSaver on Adam’s Macbook with a lot of Google-Fu, much trial and error, and quite a bit of frustration. I’ve not yet tried to quit iTunes if it’s running. That’s a new idea/requirement, but I think it should be pretty simple to add to the functioning script.
Where I’m running into trouble is controlling Dora from a script on Adam’s Macbook. I run into access errors (905 and 927 generally) about half to two thirds of the time I run the script. I’ve tried every syntax option and many combinations of syntax that I found via Google searches, but this is the one that has the most (but still inconsistent) success.
set remoteMachine to "eppc://remoteMachineadam:slajdlll#10.0.1.2"
tell application "iTunes" of machine remoteMachine
quit
end tell
When reading various articles explaining how to do this, sometimes the scripts use eppc, others use epps and I’ve not seen a consistent result with either one. Some of the articles use the actual IP address of the remote machine, others use password#name.local, so that syntax would be slajdlll#dora.local. That change also seems inconsistent in its results.
This seems to be a pretty basic task, and I’ve found lots of articles that do this very thing, but their methods don’t work in my environment. Many of the articles I’ve read are quite old, so the syntax may be out of date. I’m kind of at my wits end, but feel I should be able to make this work. Any help y’all could provide would be VERY appreciated.
Update - I had the scripts working last night in all regards except controlling the remote machine. This morning, I tried to open the "Away" script to again tackle the remote control issue and I get a Syntax Error Unable To Authenticate User message and the script won't compile. Here's the code:
tell application "System Events"
try
tell application "iTunes" to quit
end try
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://Dora.local" to quit
end try
tell security preferences
set require password to wake to true
tell application "iCamSource" to activate
tell application "System Events" to start current screen saver
end tell
end tell
Both "Away" and "Home" scripts run from the AppleScript menu. When I unlock the ScreenSaver after running the "Away" script I get a dialog box stating "There was a problem connecting to the server "Dora's Airport Extreme. The share does not exist on the server. Please check the share name, and then try again." I'm beginning to think I may have a Permissions error on one or more of the machines, or if there's another problem that's making the scripts act inconsistently.
Thanks for all the help so far!
UPDATE Ok, it seems that there was a problem with iPhoto and Screen Saver interacting with the files on the networked hard drive. Opening iPhoto and slowly opening each image and re-linking those that had lost their location seems to have solved that problem. I am still encountering the access error code 905. In order to troubleshoot this process, I'm stripping the script down to one task, to quit iTunes on the remote machine named "Dora" Here's the code:
set Dora to "epps://adam:slajdlll#10.0.1.2"
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine Dora to quit
end try
Here's the event log that running that script generates:
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://epps/adam%253kslajdlll%4010.0.1.2.local"
quit
--> error number -905
end tell
Is it possible/probable that the OS X Server application is mis-configured and is preventing the script from controlling the remote machine? Any other thoughts or things to try?
Thanks!
UPDATE 2
In the Groups section of the OS X Server application running on the remote machine, I found that there is a group called Apple Remote Events ACL. When I click the Edit button to view it's settings I see the actual account name is "com.apple.access_remote_ae-disabled". I wonder if this is telling us something. I searched several libraries for "com.apple.access" thinking it may be something that could be edited, but found nothing. I'm a member of that group. I tried removing myself from the group and tried the script with no change in the results so I added myself back into it.
UPDATE 3
As suggested I'm trying to eliminate OSX Server from the equation. To do this I'm going to try to launch TextEdit (since it's faster to launch than iTunes) on a third machine, known as Office Mini that does not have the Server application on it. Here's the script:
set OfficeMini to "eppc://10.0.1.196"
try
tell application "System Events" of machine OfficeMini
open "/Applications/TextEdit.app"
end tell
end try
When I ran the script initially I got two dialog boxes asking for username and password. I supplied them and checked the "Save in Keychain" checkbox. The script didn't open TextEdit, but I'm not getting the access errors. I am getting different errors though, -600 or -10010 depending on if I use System Events or the Finder. Using the list on this page: Nicholas Reilingh AppleScript Error Codes I find that with System Events I get an error -600 which means the application isn't running. That's no surprise, I'm trying to open it. When I use the Finder instead of System Events, I get an error -10010 which the list indicates is "Handler can’t handle objects of this class." So, there's progress, but I'm still stumped.
UPDATE 4 To further clarify/simplify, I tried running a simple script to open iTunes on the Office Mini locally on that machine and it worked fine.
tell application "iTunes" to activate
Substituting the "quit" for "activate", and trying this syntax with several different applications all worked quite well and very fast. I tried the same script and variations on the Dora machine with the same, successful results.
I then tried to make that syntax work remotely with this code:
set OfficeMini to "eppc://10.0.1.196"
tell application "iTunes" of machine OfficeMini to quit
I got this error message in the event log:
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://10.0.1.196"
quit
--> error number -927
Result:
error "iTunes got an error: Unable to authenticate user." number -927
So, since OSX Server isn't running on the Office Mini, this seems to eliminate that as a culprit for the error. I tried altering the code with another variant I saw online that uses "epps" in place of "eppc" which results in a similar error message: "iTunes got an error: Remote access isn’t allowed." number -905. I did not get dialog boxes requesting credentials. When I've seen the "epps" string used online, it was formatted as "epps://username:password#location" so I used "epps://adam:slajdlll#10.0.1.196" and received the same error message. I even tried "Adam" in place of "adam" with no change in the results.
Yes, step 1 is to try to make your script as simple as possible to narrow down the point of failure.
I have copied your minimal script onto my machine & gotten it to work:
set Dora to "minipuppy.local"
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine Dora to quit
end try
A few notes:
I used "minipuppy.local" (the Bonjour linklocal name) rather than your eppc stuff, because I know what the former is, but not the latter. (You can get the link local name from the Sharing prefs panel* where it says "Computers on your local network can access your computer at:XXXXX"
An authentication dialog popped up saying that I needed to enter the username and password for the target machine - but it did have
an eppc address in the dialog (I didn't take a screenshot :-( )
After entering the username/password my script did nothing. Interestingly, I could not get it to print out a log as yours has?
I fixed this by going to the target Mac's System Preferences & enabling "Remote Apple Events" in the Sharing panel*. After turning that on, my script worked.
I'm hoping enabling "Remote Apple Events" is the ultimate solution to your simplified problem.
*Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing

QuickReport throws "There Is No Default Printer Currently Selected" Exception

I have created a Delphi Service which prints TQuickReports. Everything works fine if compiled and run as a Windows Application. But when converted to operate as a service trying to create a form containing a TQuickRep component throws the exception.
This service runs fine on many other boxes but not this one in particular. Here are some details:
Using QuickReport version 4.07
Box is a Windows Server 2008 operating system.
Using Delphi 2007
Printer.Printers.Count is returning a positive value. In fact I can list out all of the printers.
I have tried running the service both using Local System Account and Logged on as an Admin.
Is there a default printer set up in session 0? Remember that under Vista / Server 2008 / Windows 7, services run in a separate session. Whether or not the logged-in user has a default printer set is not relevant - it's a per-session setting and doesn't affect session 0.
Can you rewrite the code to gracefully handle that exception and pick a printer to use?
You can solve this problem by creating a new dword UserSelectedDefault with the value: 1 in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\SessionDefaultDevices\Session_ID
Make sure you have a local printer selected.
You might give the user a way to select the printer for the service. The Windows service probably does not have a default printer set.
Set TQuickRep.PrinterSettings.PrinterIndex to set the printer number. Then, TQuickRep.Print to print the report.
A colleague ended up finding the solution. I should have added these are "network" printers and not Local printers (at the time I didn't think this was related to the problem). So the service needed to be installed with "NetworkService" as the user account under the logon tab. From the Windows Help:
To specify that the service uses the Network Service account, click This account, and
then type NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
We had a simular problem here. Using TS servers, Citrix and Powerfuse 9.
Powerfuse had all printers capitalized, however they were shared in a mixed case.
This combination caused Delphi/QReport to crash
When all printers are from printserver to powerfuse in the same case (not important upper or lower or even mixed), the problem was gone
Actually it is a Delphi(5) problem. The comparison of the available printers and the default printer is case sensitive (Printers.pas):
if TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]).Device = Device then
begin
with TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]) do
SetPrinter(PChar(Device), PChar(Driver), PChar(Port), 0);
Exit;
end;
Changing the comparison to:
if lowercase(TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]).Device) = lowercase(Device)
solves the problem.
If using terminal services 2008, same user for multiple sessions, you should look into the:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\SessionDefaultDevices\Session_ID
instead of
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\
I solved a similar problem: If a Delphi application (or service) uses QuickReport, it runs before the system loads the default printer (or printers).
When QuickReport executes TQRPrinter.Init, the printer.printers.count is zero,
shortly after the system loads, the printer.printers.count is the number of printers,
but tqrprinter.int has already executed, so TQRPrinter.FPrinterOK is false,
you then see this error when you try open a QuickReport.
The solution for me was wait until the printers were loaded before launching the application (in citrix and terminal server). I solved this in two ways, either by overwriting tqrprinter or delay the dpr.

Delphi Printer.Printers not refreshing

I have created a Delphi service which is responsible for printing QuckReports to specific printers contained within the printer.Printers list. I pass my routine the printer name and it looks up in the printer.printers array to get the proper index. It then does this:
QuickRep1.PrinterSettings.PrinterIndex := iIndex;
In the help files it says this for printer.refresh: "Call Refresh when the installed fonts or printers on the current system may have changed". So I call the refresh before I look up the printer name against the printer.printers array.
At one of my installations this function is not working properly. If printers are added/deleted, or someone with printers under their profiles logs on, the list does not seem to get refreshed until the service is stopped and restarted.
Does this function not work for services?
The installation where this is occurring utilizes "virtual services". Could this have anything to do with it?
Thanks.
My experience and understanding is the printers array is updated only at application start. Anytime a new printer is installed, the application must be restarted to get the correct list.
I'm curious to hear any different experience with this myself.
EDIT: From my comment below; I wrote a small test program that confirms the TPrinters.Refresh() does update the printers list.

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