Printer Ports disappearing on Network Win7 machines

Not sure what is going on, but 75% of the time when a user logs into any of our machines that have Win7 the ports disappear and they can't print. The spooler is running. If I restart it, it seems to fix it, or reboot sometimes it will fix it. I have been fighting this for over 2 months and can't figure it out.

I have loaded the latest drivers I can get for the printers. I also turned off the Print services under Windows features. I adjusted the Print and Point info in gpedit.msc. What else am I missing here? This is causing major issues at my work that people are starting to get frustrated. There has to be a fix for this. Any ideas?

These printers are mapped on a Win2003 server to the network and only these Win7 systems have this issue.

I have the exact same problem. Win2k3 print server using GP to deploy printers. I too have change the Point and Print stuff in GPO

It is real big issue. Some staff are fine and others continually have the problem.

We have Windows Vista and XP here that have not got this problem at all!

Also with the deploying of printers, it looks like some dont deploy correctly as they have yellow exclamation marks. I then remove the printer and perform a reboot and the printer comes back fine. Interestingly if I try to remove a printer that has deployed correctly I get an error stating that the device cannot be removed.

Man Windows 7 might be a nicer OS to use but with issues like these, MS better get their butt into gear!

The only way we were able to fix the problem was to move all the printers to a Windows 2008 R2 Server box. This resolved the compatibility issues with Windows 7. No matter what we tried, we could not get them to work properly in Win 7 coming from a Win2k3 server.

Thanks very much for your response. I was contemplating this, however we have 50 - 60 printers and as such it wont be a very easy task.
Not to worry, Im so glad that there actually is a solution out there.

I have the same issue. I wouldn't call moving all printers to a W2K8 server a solution however! I don't have any W2K8 servers online yet, and it's not feasible to move all my printers to one even if I did.

This seems like a very big problem indeed, and is going to bring my Win 7 rollouts to a grinding halt.

Hi Everyone,
My name is John Dickson and I work on the Performance Team specializing in printing support at Microsoft.

We may have found a resolution to this issue. Starting in Windows Vista and in Windows 7 we introduced Asynchronous RPC which speeds up communication to a Windows 2008/2008 R2 Server. Windows Server 2003 doesn't support this new protocol and when Windows 7 tries to communicate using Async RPC, this is most likely causing the temporary loss of communication.

The result is the blank driver tab and port tab.

The work around is to disable Async RPC by adding the following registry key on the Windows 7/Vista clients:

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\EnabledProtocols
Type: DWORD
Data: 6

Moving your print servers to Server 2008/2008 R2 resolves the issue also as they support Asynchronous RPC.

We will be posting a public facing article on this issue soon.

Hi Everyone,
We have resolved this issue via hotfix 2388142 which can be downloaded from article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2388142.

To obtain this hotfix, use the link above and click on "View and Request Hotfix Downloads" or use link on the right hand pane to Chat with a support professional who can send the hotfix.

Thanks for your patience!
Best regards,
John