Applications locking up when printing to a print server

Question

I have a few printers set up on a print server. When some of my users try to print, the first print job seems to go through fine. After that, trying to send another print job to a printer completely locks up the application they are printing from, and the print job is never completed.

I've tried restarting the print spooler, cleaning out the spool files under system32\spool\printers, removing and adding the printer again, nothing seems to allow the user to print, until they do a hard reboot. Then we repeat the process again, first print works, nothing after that.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Enabled the PrintService Operational Event logs, below is an example of a failed print event:

The print job 22 was sent through the print processor hpcpp140 on printer Office Printer, driver HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 PCL 6, in the isolation mode 1 (0 - loaded in the spooler, 1 - loaded in shared sandbox, 2 - loaded in isolated sandbox). Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 0x103.

And here's an example of a successful event:

The print job 21 was sent through the print processor hpcpp140 on printer Office Printer, driver HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 PCL 6, in the isolation mode 1 (0 - loaded in the spooler, 1 - loaded in shared sandbox, 2 - loaded in isolated sandbox). Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 0x0.

The failed job returns an error of 0x103, while the successful job returns an error of 0x0. Both jobs are using the same PCL 6 driver it seems.

EDIT: Seem to have fixed the issue.

I believe the issue was I didn't remove the printer and the drivers from the clients before removing the device off the server. I removed the deployed printer from the GPO through Print Management, completely removed the device from the server, cleaned the drivers, then set the printer back up from scratch using the HP Universal PCL 6 driver. Re-deployed the printer through GPO, everything seems to be working now.

Solution

I had a similar issue and these are the steps I took:

1. Removing the printer from the client host.

2. Remove / reinstall / update the printer driver at the printing server, if you remove the printer, make sure you re-create it with the same name it had, so any references in its clients are not broken

3. Re-add the printer on the client host, it will pull the driver from the printing server

   It installed the same version, but only after that it worked properly. Apparently the driver was corrupted

Comments

[Kishan K]

So what do the logs say (print server, client) ? Did you perform a packet capture? Sorry but my crystal ball is not available today :)

[Kishan K]

If you don't know what is causing it, and looking at the logs is not fruitful, then maybe looking at the traffic is.

[Steve Stoveld]

The operational logs were not enabled for PrintService in Event Viewer. I've enabled them, but of course now I am having trouble reproducing the issue. Will post back with more info when I can get a print job to fail!

[Steve Stoveld]

Ok I was able to get a user to fail a print, Updating the main post with log

[yagmoth555]

Did you unplugged the printer for +-30m, and tested again if it's always with the same printer (to rule out a physical problem with the printer) and did you updated the print driver to test again. In my experience a lot of problem with printer are a faulty print driver

[Steve Stoveld]

I haven't unplugged the printer for an extended period yet. Some users are still able to print, so I don't want to kill it quite yet. I have tried switching drivers, but it still seems to be locking up. I've tried switching the print processor from hpcpp140 to winprint, tried disabling SNMP Status on the port configuration, running out of ideas.

[the-wabbit]

I definitely would try using a different driver. HP's model-specific drivers tend to come with a lot of client-side colourful user-experiency stuff implemented in the driver code itself. The HP UPD PCL6 driver has been a safe and convenient option for print servers for several years now, although it might be lacking some functions of the model-specific driver.

[Kishan K]

Did you look up error code 259 (0x103)? Are we supposed to do this for you? :)

[Steve Stoveld]

@the-wabbit Thanks, I'll try that driver. It definitely seems like it's boiling down to driver issue, although I've completely removed the printer and associated drivers and reinstalled, although haven't had much luck yet. Generic driver seems like it might be the way to go.

[Steve Stoveld]

This seems to have worked. I tried a few times with this method, but didn't seems to work for every machine. I believe the issue was I didn't remove the printer and the drivers from the clients before removing the device off the server. I removed the deployed printer from the GPO through Print Management, completely removed the device from the server, cleaned the drivers, then set the printer back up from scratch using the HP Universal PCL 6 driver. Re-deployed the printer through GPO, everything seems to be working now.

[kamihack]

Removing the printer from the client first is important, otherwise Windows won't overwrite the locally stored driver. It took me while to figure this out.