Hello!

   I have built a Windows 2012 R2 server with Remote Desktop Services running on it.  Remote users are having trouble with inconsistent printing through their RDP clients.  Their printers show up as redirected printers and do print sometimes, but other times nothing prints - the user click print, select their printer, and nothing shows up.  Later it will just start working for them again.  The problem seems to be universal - it is happening on clients with different versions of Windows, different printer models, and different printer manufacturers.  Has anyone seen this?  Are there any hotfixes for this that I can install?  I have all of the latest Windows Updates installed.

Thanks... Dave

Ok, I have some more information which may be helpful.  It appears like it is not only RDP redirected printing which is a problem.  I'm also having users have network printers which are only sporadically printing.  I have network printers configured for each user and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't work.  When printing from our Microsoft NAV software I didn't see any error message when the printing wouldn't work - just nothing would print out.  But from Notepad I see the following error message: A StartDocPrinter call was not issued.  From Paint I see the following message: Paint: Could not start print job.   Looking on the Print Server, these jobs never make it to the Print Queue.  

   So it doesn't look like this print problem is only affecting the redirected printers - it seems to be also affecting network printers.

   Can anyone help?  I'd certainly appreciate it!

Thanks... Dave

Are you configure printer selection in NAV? You can find it on Administration->IT Administration->General Setup->Printer Selections.

Aleksandar,

   Thanks for your response!  I only see one printer selection listed (for a specific user and it has a report id of 0).  So I would say that the issue isn't regarding printer selection.  Plus I am experiencing the problem from Windows applications such as Notepad and Paint.  So the problem doesn't appear to only be with NAV.  It's just that NAV didn't report a printing error which made the NAV orders "disappear".  Once I realized that other applications had the issue (and reported errors at the print failure), it made it more clear that the problem wasn't with NAV.

Thanks.. dave

Hi Dave,

1. For your redirected printers, are you using RD Easy Print driver exclusively?

2. For your network printers (and other printer drivers you may have installed), please see if you can configure print driver isolation so that they are running in separate processes.

3. Any errors/warnings in the log?  Event Viewer\Applications and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\PrintService

Thanks.

-TP

TP,

   Great questions - thanks so much.

1.  RD Easy Print - Yes the GP is set to Not Configured which defaults to using Easy Print (both Enabled and Not Configured defaults to using Easy Print).

2.  Network Printers - These drivers were not set to run in isolation mode.  I just made the change.

3.  Errors/warnings:  Event ID 372, Source: PrintService

The document Print Document, owned by <username>, failed to print on printer maintenance NAV printer (redirected 10). Try to print the document again, or restart the print spooler. 
Data type: RAW. Size of the spool file in bytes: 200789. 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: 122. The data area passed to a system call is too small.

Any idea where to go from here?  I do appreciate the help!!!

dave

Oh, here is another error in this event log:

The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\tsprint.dll, error code 0xC1. See the event user data for context information.

Hi Dave,

Error code 0xC1 indicates that tsprint.dll is not a valid Win32 application. According to this, please try to reinstall or update the corresponding printer driver and test the issue again.

Hope this helps.

 

Jeremy,

   Thanks for your suggestion.  When I look at the property - details of C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\tsprint.dll it looks like this file is a Microsoft file which comes with the OS.  It doesn't appear (to me) like this installs with a specific printer.  (The product name is Microsoft Windows Operating System).  

   If I'm missing something I would greatly appreciate you pointing it out to me..

Thanks.. Dave

Hi Dave,

I am trying to involve someone to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Hi Dave,

Please try Installing an updated driver and see how the issue goes.

Windows NT 4.0 printer drivers are not supported on computers running Microsoft Windows Vista or later. Obtain from the printer manufacturer a driver (that displays the Designed for Windows logo) for the specific model of printer, and install the driver on the affected computer.

For more information about printing, please reference the article below.
===========================================================================
Why can't I print?: //windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Why-cant-I-print

Install a printer: //windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Install-a-printer

You may try downloading the Fix-it from the link below and check:

Troubleshoot printer problems: //windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Troubleshoot-printer-problems

Hope this helps.

Sophia,

   I don't think that I have any NT 4.0 drivers on this server.  I believe that all of the drivers are for 64bit servers (like 2008 R2 and later).  I don't even know if I can install NT drivers - aren't they rejected on install?  Plus NT drivers were only 32bit.  I'm only putting on 64bit drivers.

   Besides the problems aren't confined to a single printer - I'm having problems with all printers (different models and different manufacturers) and with both re-directed printers and with shared printers.

   I'm hoping that Jeremy_Wu will be able to give me some further direction...

Thanks... Dave

Hi Dave,

tsprint.dll is part of the RD Easy Print Driver.  I don't know why it is having a problem, but one suggestion I have is to remove the driver and then add it back.  To do this you can use Print Management, in left pane under Print Servers right-click on the local server's name and choose properties.  On the Drivers tab delete RD Easy Print, then click Add, select Microsoft for the manufacturer and RD Easy Print for the driver.

You should have all users with redirected printers logged off when you delete/add the above driver.  If you need to perform this while you are logged on then simply uncheck Printers in your Remote Desktop Client before you connect so that it will not redirect your printers.

-TP

TP,
   Thanks for the idea.  Here is what I did:
1. I rebooted the RDP Server.
2. From another server running Print Management, I deleted the Easy Print driver.  I got a message saying that tsprint.inf couldn't be removed.  But then it said that EasyPrint was deleted and it didn't show up in the list.
3. I tried to install the EasyPrint driver but I got the error message that the EasyPrint (Type 3, User-Mode, x64) driver couldn't be installed (The operation is not supported).  
4. I rebooted the RDP Server.
5. The EasyPrint driver showed up.
   So I don't know if I was really able to get it removed correctly.  I'll see if the users find that it works any better or not...
Thanks.. Dave

• Proposed as answer by colemaj1 Wednesday, November 20, 2013 5:06 PM
• Unproposed as answer by colemaj1 Wednesday, November 20, 2013 5:06 PM

Just an FYI

I had a similar problem in Win 8 x64 Enterprise N.  Basically, randomly I would receive the "startdocprinter .." error from Microsoft office 2013 prof from word intermittently when I tried to print.  I would always receive the error from "notepad" when I tried to print.  I entered the following command line statement into my login script and rebooted.  This resolved my problem

Rem Windows 8

reg delete "hkcu\printers\settings" /f

then I reinstall my printers which reinstalls the drivers

there is another one for lower versions of Windows but I don't know what version of windows it changes at

reg delete "hkcu\printers\connections" /f

I hope this helps someone since I spent a lot of trying different things to resolve the problem.

TP,
   FYI, making this change to the EasyPrint driver (or at least trying to) didn't help.  The users are still reporting printing problems.
Thanks... Dave

I have the same problem ~~~

Can any body find the solution?

Hello,

Accouding to the error message of Errors/warnings:  Event ID 372, Source: PrintService which you provided before, please restart the print spooler and test how the issue goes.

Sophia Su,

   Thanks for your suggestion.  However I have tried rebooting the entire computer several times without success.  It doesn't appear to be a problem that can be simply resolved by restarting the spooler service...

Thanks.. Dave

Hello Dave,

It seems that the AV Software blocked the operation. Then would you please uninstall the AV Software and test how the issue goes?

Besides, please help check whether we still get the same error messages related to the printing you mentioned before. If there are any other error messages, please upload them. Thanks for your cooperation.

Sophia Su,

   There is no AV Software running on this RDP Server.

   I am continuing to see the following errors:

• Event ID 808: The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\tsprint.dll, error code 0xC1. See the event user data for context information.
• Event ID 372, Source: PrintService.  The document Print Document, owned by <username>, failed to print on printer maintenance NAV printer (redirected 10). Try to print the document again, or restart the print spooler. Data type: RAW. Size of the spool file in bytes: 200789. 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: 122. The data area passed to a system call is too small.

   Thanks for looking into this!

dave

   

Hi Dave,

Do the uses encounter any performance issue when they RDP to the RDSH server?

Please perform the clean boot on the clients and test how the issue goes. Following are the detailed steps about clean boot:

--------------------------------------

1. Log on to the computer by using an account that has administrator rights.

2. Click Start, type msconfig.exe in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER to start the System Configuration Utility.

3. On the General tab, click Selective Startup, and then click to clear the Load startup items check box. (The Use Original Boot.ini check box is unavailable.)

4. On the Services tab, click to select the Hide all Microsoft services check box, and then click Disable all.

5. Click OK, Choose Dont show this message again and then click Restart.

6. Please RDP to the RDSH Server and check if this issue still exists.

 

Thanks.

Sophia Su,

   Thanks for your input.  

• The users aren't experiencing any performance problems.
• I cleared the "Load startup items".
• There were no non-Microsoft services.
• I rebooted the server.

   I'll see if the users are still experiencing problems and let you know...

Thanks.. Dave

Hello,

I also have the same problem, with event ID 372, when trying to print from Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop Client. In my case, restarting the server let the users print from some hours, but suddenly printing was no more working. When I try to print from Notepad, I have no error message.

Before this problem, the users had no problem printing for the two months the server was up. The print problems were starting just 10 days ago.

Patrick

Hello Dave,

Would you please let me know whether the users are still experiencing problems?

Regards,

Hello Patrik,

Would you please let me know whether all printers or only specific printers encounter this issue?

Besides, here is the article related to this issue. Hope this helpful.

Event ID 372 Print Spooler Status

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393167(v=WS.10).aspx

Sophia Su,

   I ended up creating a new Windows 2012 R2 RDP Server and installing the apps on this server.  Plus I installed the latest Windows Updates which came out last week.  This server appears to be working correctly with printing - at least as far as my client has been testing.

   So I don't really know whether the issues was an anomaly on my first RDP server or not.  If I find that I am still getting the printing errors on the second server I'll respond back to this forum...

Thanks.. Dave

• Marked as answer by Jeremy_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, January 02, 2014 6:27 AM

Sophia Su,

   I ended up creating a new Windows 2012 R2 RDP Server and installing the apps on this server.  Plus I installed the latest Windows Updates which came out last week.  This server appears to be working correctly with printing - at least as far as my client has been testing.

   So I don't really know whether the issues was an anomaly on my first RDP server or not.  If I find that I am still getting the printing errors on the second server I'll respond back to this forum...

Thanks.. Dave

• Marked as answer by Jeremy_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, January 02, 2014 6:27 AM

Hello Sophia,

the problem, when it appears, is for all printers.

In addition, I have a Win32 error code of 122, which is not described in the document.

Finally, the document is for Windows Server 2008 R2 and I have Windows Server 2012.

Patrick

• Edited by Patrick8639 Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:30 AM

Hello Sophia,

the problem, when it appears, is for all printers.

In addition, I have a Win32 error code of 122, which is not described in the document.

Finally, the document is for Windows Server 2008 R2 and I have Windows Server 2012.

Patrick

• Edited by Patrick8639 Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:30 AM

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your update. I am glad the issue is resolved.

If the issue reoccurs in future, please feel free to respond back to this forum.

Regards,

Hello Patrik,

Please install the following update rollup to update the related files to the newest edition.

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 update rollup: May 2013

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38979

Regards,

Hello Sophia,

thanks for your answer. This update was already installed in July, so I can not installed it again.

The server has all updates installed.

Patrick

Hello Patrik,

Thanks for the update.

Have you installed AV software on the Server? If the answer is yes, please uninstall it and then test how the issue goes.

Thanks,

Sophia

Hello Sophia,

sorry for the delay, but I had to wait for the end of the holidays and to find the good time to do this.

I have uninstalled the antivirus, but the problem is still here.

Patrick

Hello,

I experience the same problem with Windows 2012 Std Server. Printing on redirected printers on RDP clients doesn't work. We have AV disabled on server and on client AV is also disabled. It's possible to change redirected printed properties but still none of the printers works. I've tested it on XP, W7 and W8 client computers with std. RDP client and 2X RDP client.

JH  

Hello Sophia,

are you still here?
As said before, I still have this problem.

Patrick

I have the exact same problem as dbaddorf on two brand new Windows server 2012 R2 remote desktop hosts at a client.

Does anyone found a solution to this issue - beside reinstall the Windows server?

/Ulrik

I've the same problem, intermittently.

The only event id is 372 with error code 122: The data area passed to a system call is too small.

Anyone found out a solution?

Roberto

Hello,

i got the problem, too.

This morning our 2012 R2 RDS Server started to thow event id 372 - Error 5: permission denied.

It started at around 9:00 the first user called with printing problems. As we searched for a solution step by step more users got the problem. But some lucky users were still able to print.

Finally we set permission on %windir%/system32/spool/ for all users to "change". This fixed the printing problem for ~90% of our users.

But the other 10% now get "Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 122. The data area passed to a system call is too small."

There's no AV on the Server.
Only MS Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 is distributed as Remote-Program.
Just one additional printer driver was installed. (Zebra TLP 2844 - Win x64 - 4.6.67.3)
All other printers are maped over Easyprint. Which worked nice... until this morging.
I don't think its important, but the server runs as VM with 128 GB RAM on a HyperCore 2012 R2.

Christian

Hi everyone,

I finally have fixed the problem for the 122 error code.

With any kind of printer if you use the easyprint driver, sometimes, the print process dosn't work and it return the error code you have experience.

With two or three model of printer, I had to install the SAME correct driver on the client and server.

From that, I never had any other error.

Roberto 

Hello everyone,

We have exact the same problem like above. Client cannot print while connected via RDP and using printer redirection. Server is Win2012 Server, Client Win7 (some win 8.1). Everything was working fine till september 15 (september 14 Win update). We tried to unistall all updates within that date, but still not working. 

There is a funny thing, if we restart server, client can print for some time-hour or two. 

Restarting print spooler does not help.

Also win 2012 server has no "restore point" option, so we are stuck.

Help please.

Thanks in advance,

Nick

Hi,

I know this is not the answer you're looking for, but as a rule I try and steer clear of using the Remote Desktop Easy Print driver. It's caused trouble for clients I've worked with on more than one occasion.

Hello again,

Wa are trying to avoid that:)

We were trying to duplicate the error on some other macihne:

->after server reboot everything works until disconnect/connect again to rdp, then it stops printing until server reboot

->event id 372,  122 

Thanks,

Nick

This problem is a bug in Virtual Channel. I have clients suffering with this bug with all my programs using Virtual Channel.

Usually all communications between server and client side under a remote session (RDP or ICA of Citrix) use Virtual Channel. This was developed by Citrix than was resold to Microsoft. Up to Windows 2008R2 there were no change at all and everything works smoothly. But since Windows 2012, someone in MSDN team has changed the implementation of this protocol then everything that uses Virtual Channel as communication transport layer becomes unstable, sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Please read here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/7ce64172-fa7a-4a70-8635-4b83a0d88a79/wtsvirtualchannelopen-fails-on-windows-server-2012-identical-code-works-fine-on-windows-server-2008?forum=winserverTS

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/76ac27e0-5e96-4f8d-92b1-ceb1b6010e87/problems-with-wtsvirtualchannelopen-and-wtsvirtualchannelread-under-windows-server-2012?forum=windowssdk

In the first thread, there are questions asked, and someone has given some information from Microsoft MSDN team but they want people pay for more support about that bug.

I have lost almost 2 weeks to deal with this problem to make a workaround for my client to get a stable working version of my Remote Executer program. What I have found is Virtual Channel functions now become very unstable: ex: with WTSVirtualChannelOpen, sometimes it fails at the first call in the session, not only from a repeating call as the information given from MSDN engineer. Sometimes  WTSVirtualChannelWrite fails, return 0, but the GetLastError returns error message "The function completed successfully". It's very weird.

I have found the workaround method is when a error occurs during the communication, I have to close the Virtual Channel, and retry to open it (WTSVirtualChannelOpen) several times until it successes and retry the send (WTSVirtualChannelWrite)  or if the Virtual Channel could not be reopened I have to unload the whole module and retry the open and send process again. When it starts working,  it seems stable, but the error can happen at any time.

Hope that workaround may help some people until Microsoft recogizes this is a bug in their new Virtual Channel implemetation and provides some useful informations.

My other program Remote File Transfer got problem from this bug too. Inside the program, data were tranferred in binary format buffers from server to client, in some packages there are some strange bytes inserted in the package, the result is the file was corrupted on the client side.

If you Google "WTSVirtualChannelOpen Windows 2012 problem" you will find similar problem. I believe there will be more and more people having problem with this bug, because a lot of stuffs use Virtual Channel for the communication between 2 sides, like printing, device redirection, etc.

All my virtual channel programs was working since Citrix Metaframe XP 1.0 + Windows 2000, then 2003 till Windows 2008R2 without any problem, that can confirm that the Virtual Channel communication in Windows 2012/R2 has problem because I have followed the instruction from that thread but the problem is very unpredictable.

Hope that someone can forward these information to MSDN team, and they can give us a fix soon or at least give us some useful information to deal with this problem.

Thomas Tran
http://www.mqtechnologies.com

Hi there,

We still have problems and no solution:( 

Aftere first boot of the server, clients can login and print with no problem. If the client logs out, printing is no longer working when he next time login. 

How can we solve this problem? What else can we check?

Best regards,

Nikola

Hi, I got the exact same problem as "dbaddorf". 

Anyone have anything new on this. When i get the 808 error the only think that seems to solve the problem is a "Sign out" and new login for the user. 

Seems like the error occures if the client loses connection to the server only for a short while. After automatic reconnect the error 808 occures and printing does not work.

Hi everybody.
I think we need to clear up, if we talk redirected printers or non-redirected printers here.
One of my clients suffer also from this issue on Windows server 2012R2 terminal servers with non-redirected printers (or lets say normal network printers).

/Ulrik

My problem is with redirected printers.

What programs are you printing from? I had an issue where I needed to disable/lower UAC on the server for certain programs to print correctly on the server.

When the user first logged in they could print fine - but after printing from a particular application it would cause all future print jobs to fail from that application as well as any other (word, adobe, etc). No errors would appear or be generated in the logs.

I have several servers with the problem, using different Business Software and Microsoft Office. Myself has only experienced the problem in Microsoft Word.

In what way did you change disable/lower UAC?

I was having this problem myself on my 2012 RDS server. After a lot of reading and considering all kinds of workarounds, it came down to Group Policy.
Symptoms:

• End-users would be able to print to their locally attached printers.
• Seemingly out of no place, they would try to print to same printer via the same application, and it would fail with no message to the end-user.
• Sometimes logging off of the RDS server and logging back in would make it work, more often, it would not.
• Many models of printers, all clients Windows 7 64bit, all redirected printers
• In Event Viewer, if you dig into Applications and Services Logs> PrintService, you would see an error like this example:
  

• The document Print Document, owned by <username>, failed to print on printer HP LJ300-400 color MFP M375-M475 PCL 6 (redirected 18). Try to print the document again, or restart the print spooler.

  Data type: RAW. Size of the spool file in bytes: 229403. Number of bytes printed: 0. Total number of pages in the document: 1. Number of pages printed: 0. Client computer: <RDS SERVER>. Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 122. The data area passed to a system call is too small.

• Any IP printer attached to the RDS server would work fine

Solution: Group Policy

• I have an RDS GP for lots of things specific to my RDS environment.
• I made these changes:

Policy	Setting
Do not allow client printer redirection	Disabled
Do not set default client printer to be default printer in a session	Disabled
Specify RD Session Host server fallback printer driver behavior	Disabled
Use Remote Desktop Easy Print printer driver first	Disabled

No problems since.  This RDS box has been up for over two years.  How these setting were changed, I am not certain, but I have my internal suspects ;-)  The logs will bear that out.  However, if you are having problems with intermittent printer redirection in Server 2012 RDS, I would give this a try.  Easy to do; easy to revert.

Hope this helps someone.

Matthew

Any solution on Redirected Printer issue?

I have problem with empty .spl  spool files on client side.  Printing never succeeds.