Windows 7 Printing sends a Local Downlevel Document and will NOT Print
I am testing some Windows 7 Professional clients on my SBS 2003 (Svc PK2) domain and I am having a confusing printing problem. Each day my Win 7 users turn on their machines and it seems like the first prints of the day ALWAYS fail. When they print it actually sends two items to the print que. One item is the appropriate print page (even a simple test page has the same result). But the other item is simply listed as Local Downlevel Document. This is the problem item. it will NOT print. I have to stop and restart the print spooler while trying to delete this item from the que. Sometimes it takes many, many tries before it disappears. Once it does I can stop and restart the print spooler one more time (yes...this extra start and stop seems to help) and now my prints will be sent to the que properly and the prints will come out without a problem. Until tomorrow when the process seems to start again.Are there any suggestions I can try??? I have updated the printer drivers to the latest I can find on the internet. I have rebuilt my printing ques but always have the same results. Any suggestions at all?Thanks for any helpRich
January 27th, 2010 5:59pm

Not even a suggestion from anyone? No one has seen anything like this before? I am the only one having this issue? Are there any Microsoft technicians following this forum or is this just a user forum?
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February 1st, 2010 6:22pm

That is because the printer driver installation does not start because of the error. By default high privilege will be needed when you install driver. The clients may need to install the Windows 7 compatible driver on their client computers. Printer driver installation program will prompt that if you would like to install a local printer or a network shard printer. Then select the correct option and finish the installation. If the driver installation program does not help in this, follow the steps below to add a shard printer. 1. Click Start, click Control Panel and double click Devices and Printers.2. Click Add a Printer. 3. Select "Add a local printer". 4. Select "Create a new port". Choose "Local Port" as the type of the port.5. In the box "Enter a port name", type the address as the following format. \\[IP address of the host computer]\[The Share Name of the printer] Then click Next. 6. Follow the instruction to finish the installation. During installing, choose the correct driver in the driver list. Also you can try to add the Windows 7 compatible printer driver to the printer server. You need to install the Windows 7 compatible driver in one of the Windows 7 client, then follow the steps below. 1. Install the driver on one of the Windows 7 clients.2. Launch mmc from Start Search box.3. Click File->Add/Remove Snap-in.4. Add "Print Management". Point to the server in "Specify the printer server". 5. Expand "Printer Management"->"Printer Servers"->"Drivers". 6. Right-click, then click "Add a driver".7. follow the instructions to add the Windows 7 printer driver. After doing so the driver should be added into the server. If the driver is packed, you can directly extract the driver pack and add the driver from Printer Management in the printer server. If the printer driver is not found, the driver should be not designed for enterprise environment. In this case you may need to add the printer from the client side manually. Arthur Xie - MSFT
February 2nd, 2010 10:58am

Thank you Arthur for your suggestions. I will try some of them today. I will let the forum know my results in case anyone else has experienced a similar problemThanksRich
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February 2nd, 2010 4:41pm

I am getting the same error on Windows 7. I am trying to print to a Toshiba estudio 452 copier/printer/fax/scanner.
February 3rd, 2010 10:35pm

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.
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March 9th, 2010 6:29am

Hi JohnI can imagine, this will be the solution. I'm going to test it with several clients on next days. As first I'm going to create the new registry key manually. Inbetween I'm trying to find out how we can implement this new registry key with a GPO. We have Windows 2003 Domain Controller and Windows 7 Clients. Any suggestions for me?
March 9th, 2010 6:49pm

WOW! Thank you for the answer John. We've been struggling with this randomly occurring print issue since W7 released. We have had to pull newly deployed hardware with W7 back to be replaced with their old hardware with XP while we try to find a solution. My initial tests have found this reg hack to work after restarting the print spooler. All our network printers reside on a W2K3 server. In addition to the jobs not getting to the network queue (like the original issue above) we have been experiencing occasional SLOW printing from Office 2K7 apps. Hopefully this reg hack will address that issue as well. The issue was occurring sporadically so we have been unable to nail down a particular mfg print driver or user / machine profile. Hoping to see something formally on this from Microsoft.
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March 22nd, 2010 10:22pm

Hi John I can imagine, this will be the solution. I'm going to test it with several clients on next days. As first I'm going to create the new registry key manually. Inbetween I'm trying to find out how we can implement this new registry key with a GPO. We have Windows 2003 Domain Controller and Windows 7 Clients. Any suggestions for me? Very simple solution using Group Policy Preferences. Just create/edit a GPO, go under Computer Configuration-Preferences-Windows Settings-Registry and create a Replace option in there. Once you upgrade your print server to 2008 or higher, you can simply change the value back.
March 31st, 2010 4:35am

Hi there, I've not been able to find that registry path on our Windows 7 x64 clients. I get to Windows NT but no entry for Printers and a search for EnabledProtocols draws a blank. Any additional steps?itswt
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April 6th, 2010 1:36pm

Hi there, I've not been able to find that registry path on our Windows 7 x64 clients. I get to Windows NT but no entry for Printers and a search for EnabledProtocols draws a blank. Any additional steps?itswtMake sure you went under software\policies, not software\microsoft. I believe this is what you are looking for. You can also copy/paste this into notepad and save as a .reg file and import from there.Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers]"EnabledProtocols"=dword:00000006
April 15th, 2010 2:46am

Hi JohnSame problem, but different environmentI have an HP Laserjet attached via USB to a W7 Premium workstation The printer is shared & as far as I am aware I have all the W7 sharing options set. I am using an XP SP3 client to print to it. It was fine until a few weeks agLooking from the XP client, the print Q accepts the job, says its OK, and then the job disappears. I get an "printed OK " message. When I then look at the Q on the W7 machine, there is the job. But its stuck. I can delete it, restart it, etc, but nothing actually happens I have tried your reg fix but to with no success. I did it at both ends, and also just the XP client. I can only get the "stuck" job to print by restarting the print spooler on the W7 machine Any ideas? Regards
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April 15th, 2010 8:20pm

Hi John - again. I should have said W7 Profesional, not Premium. Regards
April 15th, 2010 8:56pm

I have the same problem. I cannot find that registry path on our Windows 7 Pro x32 clients. I get to Windows NT and only have Terminal Services and Windows File Protection options. I am using Windows Registry Editor Version 6.1 (Build 7600) Any help would be great!
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May 25th, 2010 10:35pm

I am having the same issues and like LBdmv i only have Terminal Services and File Protection option on my Windows 7 Professional machines. Does anyone have a solution if we dont have the particular reg key on client machines Thanks
July 2nd, 2010 1:41pm

Hi Is this thread dead or is there no answer to this problem. Any assistance would be great as its becoming a nuisance to users now. Thanks
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July 14th, 2010 5:28pm

The answer from John Dickson above resolved our issue.
July 15th, 2010 3:51pm

Just add a Printer key under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT] and then add the DWORD-16 naming it EnabledProtocols and Data equal 6. Restart Print Spool service and you'll be set.
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July 15th, 2010 6:01pm

Thanks to John for being the face of MS and answering this. It has confounded me over the last month or so and all my searches, until now, had found unanswered posts in tech forums. Will be interested to see the article when it is posted, perhaps a link could be posted here.
November 19th, 2010 8:41am

That may work, but this thread shows that MS has taken it one step further and issued a hotfix for this known issue. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2388142 "You configure a client computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to use a Windows Server 2003 shared network printer to print. However, the print job intermittently fails. When this issue occurs, you do not receive an error message on the client computer. And, the print job is not printed on the physical printer. If you open the printer properties then Ports tab from the client computer, the Ports may be grayed out or blank. Note To recover the print functionality on the client computer temporarily, you can restart the Print Spooler service."-Dane
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December 17th, 2010 9:42pm

Thanks dangolo....thread and hotfix worked great!
June 9th, 2011 3:53pm

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