Printer Ports keep disappearing!

patwhatsthat said:

do me a favor and check your event viewer and the event viewer on the 2003 server, both application and system events and see if we can get some insight there. And one more thing, is this a domain or workgroup environment.

Already done that. They both do not show anything as Print Spooler still shows it's running when I restart it.

Domain. I now brought in a contractor to assist me with this. They also have one other customer that has the same problem on his Win7 machines and we haven't found a way to resolve it. What we did yesterday to try, is move those printers to our Win08 server we just installed 2 weeks ago. So far I haven't heard one complaint and my own PC hasn't disconnected like it was either since then.

Try this. We had the same issue and had to go to Microsoft PS to get it sorted out.
Windows 7 Printer Ports disappear when connecting to a Server 2003/R2 Print Server
Problem
The Win7 laptops could not print after returning to work in the morning.

Cause
The Win7 client was trying to communicate with the printer server via the Asynchronous RPC protocol. This protocol is a new protocol only supported in Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 printer serves. Because your printer server is Windows 2003, it does not support this Asynchronous RPC protocol so the Win7 client failed to communicate with it.

Solution
To resolve the problem, we configured the following registry value in the GPO:

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

This will disallow the use of the Asynchronous RPC protocol on the client, so the client will always try to communicate with the normal RPC protocol and therefore the problem should not happen again.

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.

I have tried this with no success. The ports on the printer settings keeps disappearing. I am however printing to a windows server 2003 R2 64bit. I am wanting to deploy 7 to my other users but will need a fix prior to then. Come on MS.

same here, ive added Reg key and got the same problem 30min later, My client are win7 to a win2003 domain... any ideas to fix this?

Hi Everyone,

I don't know if people are still having issues with this, but thought I would share what worked for me.
Regarding Registry full path: HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\EnabledProtocols
Type: DWORD
Data: 6

I tried using the registry edit above and I didn't even have "EnabledProtocols" listed under Printers, but added it and still nothing.

I did however notice when I would start the print spooler service and then double click my default printer, there was a print job that would try printing but would keep getting stuck in the queue, therefore possibly killing the print spooler service.

I manually deleted the print jobs in C:\Windows\System32\Spool\PRINTERS
and the print spooler service remained running after I restarted it.

Hope it helps someone.

The registry fix worked for me! I just created a gpo to add it to the registry.

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

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

Hi John,
Thanks much for pointing out this hotfix!

One question: does this also apply to Windows Vista and 2008 (R1)? If so, what is the recommended fix? I've read much about the Asynch RPC issue in various forums, but I'm not able to find a clear answer to whether or not these operating systems are affected.

Thanks!