I've got a interesting problem within my newly installed windows server 2008 r2 domain. the environment is like this: all the servers were installed as windows server 2008 r2 with sp1 already integrated and got patched up to date. after the domain was running just fine and the best practice analyzers got peased i turned towards the clients. all of the clients got installed as windows 7 professional x64 with sp1 already integrated. one of the servers has the file and print roles with the latest whql compatible drivers for various models of hp and canon printers. everything works fust fine but every two to three days a random windows 7 client insists that the printers on the print server were offline - which is not true, in fact they work just fine. anfter i restart the spooler service on that client it takes some seconds and then - oh wonder! - recognizes that the printers are not offline. until now there were never more than one client at once which had this problem but there were various client in total which had the problem. please spare me advices like "update the printer driver" or "install the latest windwos updates" or "make a system restore" because as already stated i have the latest x64 windows server os only recently installed with up to date service pack and updates the latest x64 windows client os only recently installed with up to date service pack and updates the latest whql printer drivers i could get from the vendors on a last note: i'm not inclined to disable snmp on the printers to avoid false positives - i'm on the search for the cause so i can fix that problem instead of hiding it. thanks in advance dom

Hi, Please run the printer troubleshooter first and check if it helps. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Open-the-Printer-troubleshooter I suggest to perform these tests you can try: 1 Temporally disable firewall on Windows 7 2 The problem may be caused by the printer change its IP address itself. Please set the IP address of the printer to a static address. If you add the printer again by browsing the network, the Standard TCP/IP port will only work as long as the printer retains the same IP. If the print device support DNS or WNS name registration you can add a Standard TCP/IP Port using the hostname rather than a transient IP address for DHCP enabled print devices. 3 If the printer changed IP address, go to Devices & Printers --> Printer Properties --> Ports --> Standard TCP/IP Port for your printer --> Configure Port. Then change the IP address where it says “Printer name or IP address” to the new IP address that you found. In addition, sometimes disable SNMP could fix the issue. You can make a try to check if it will avoid the same issue occurs. Furthermore, this link may helpful to you: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172811 Hope that helps. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hey Leo, thanks for your advices. unfortunately none of them helped, the troubleshooter didn't find anything all printers have fixed IPs from the beginning the firewall is well configured, but oh well I've tried disabling it too, but to no avail let me make one point more clear: up till now it was always one - and only one - random client from over 50 which had the problem. every two or three days it was another client. if the problem is present and i go to devices&printers on an affected client i see all of the network printers offline - the virtual printers for PDF and XPS sometimes too but not every time. After i restart the spool service on the affected client everything works again as if nothing ever happened. any other ideas i could give a try? Thanks Dom

Hi Dom, If restart spool service can solve the problem, I think the issue should related with the driver of printers. If one of the printer’s driver is not compatible with Windows 7, the issue will random occurs. So what model of printers did you use? I suggest to remove all drivers of printers on both server and clients, get and make sure the drive is support to Windows 7. And re-deploy these drivers to clients to see the result. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Leo, as stated in my first post, I already have the latest whql drivers for all of my printers be it the canon ir-adv5030c or one of the hp (color) laser jet models clj3700 / lj4100dtn / P3020 / P2025 / ... all in all I've got only two whql drivers in use: one is for the canon ir-adv5030c and the other one is the hp universal whql driver matching all models in question - and I specifically chose the whql drivers over the other versions the vendors offer to avoid any driver problems. furthermore i don't think this is driver related at least not exclusively - for if it were the problem would exist only on clients with the malfunctioning driver installed. I have cases where only one of the drivers is installed on a client and not the other and vice versa and cases where both drivers are installed. whatever the case the problem is existent. if it still were a driver problem it would mean that both whql certified drivers had a problem - and i don't believe the whql certification program to be so lax - furthermore both drivers are relatively common and fairly often used so i can't think by any stretch of the imagination that if it were a problem with the driver that i was the only one to have that problem. Oh, I almost forgot to note the most irritating fact: I've yet to find a way to reproduce the problem. As of now I was unable to narrow down the problem and isolate the trigger - it just happens So Leo, do you have any other options left for me to try before I have to open an support request? Thanks Dom

I've yet to find a way to reproduce the problem. Hi Dom, Did you find a way to reproduce the issue? Could you please describe the steps how to reproduce the issue? There’s other test you can try on Windows 7: 1 Click “Start” 2 Input print management in Search box and press ‘Enter’ 3 Go to Print Management\Custom Filters\All Drivers 4 Right click a driver, set driver isolation, isolate it. 5 Set same option to all drivers You can set this configuration on 5~10 of PCs on your domain to see the result. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi, Did your issue solved? Please feel free to give me any update. Thanks. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I am also experiencing the same problem Dominik is. Print Servers: Server 2008 R2 with SP1 Printers: Xerox 7335/7435 with latest PS/PCL drivers available 5.99.11 Clients: Windows 7 Enterprise x64 with SP1 Randomly a client running Windows 7 Ent x64 SP1 will have their network printers go 'Offline'. Restarting the local clients printer spooler brings the printers back online. When the printers went 'Offline' I tried adding another printer from the print server that all the printers were offline and I receive Errror 0x00000002. Interestingly enough though when this happens I'm able to add a printer from a different print server. I have noticed that this seems to happen more frequently with users that remote into their Windows 7 machine from another computer. Hope some of the information will help narrow down a culprit. Like Dominik I have been unable to reproduce the issue. Looking through event logs hasn't narrowed down a culprit either.

Hi mrbsl Do you also use the office 2010 x64 platform on your clients? What antivirus product/version do you use? I'm trying to collect some similarities in our environments, maybe that helps cracking this hard nut. Dom

Hi Leo, I've been out of office for a week of holiday. I will try your last suggestion after I've read into the function you proposed tomorrow morning but as far as I've read on the internet in the last five minutes this is a server option - nothing regarding the client. I'll dig further into the matter tomorrow morning. I've yet to find a way to reproduce the problem. When tracking stubborn and persistent problems it is quite easy to get empiric evidence on the culprit - but this one is giving me headaches. Whatever I tried to provoke the problem - nothing helped in a reproductive fashion. In fact I wasn't even able to provoke it at least once. So whenever it happens - it just happens and it still seems to happen on a random client. Dom

I will try your last suggestion after I've read into the function you proposed tomorrow morning Hi Dom, Please kindly update the result whatever the last suggestion work or not. Thank you. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Clients run: Office 2010 x32 (we don't use Office 2010 x64), Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 Print Server: HP ProLiant DL360 G7, Server 2008 R2 with SP1. We are NOT using group policy to deploy printers. When I first acquainted myself with the the print server I noticed we were setup using WSD ports. I have since moved them to Standard TCP/IP (I did not completely remove the shares and recreate them just pointed them to new TCP/IP port). We use PCL and PS drivers. A majority of the users who have this problem also RDP to their Win7 desktops from other Win7/XP machines.

Hi Leo. After testing your last suggestion I'm still experiencing the problem, so your last note seems to be inapropiately marked as an answer. Please fix that so others may find this thread more useful. Back to topic: Do you have any other suggestions on how to tackle this problem? Thanks Dom

Thank you for your update. I will escalate this case. Another senior engineer will help you to solve the issue. Thank you for your understanding. Regards, Leo Huang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

This used to be an issue with W2k3 that was later fixed. I havent seen much issues with printers offline in w2k8R2 There is only one other reported case with w2k8R2 that i found where the customer decided to disable SNMP and hence was not investigated further. Reading through your notes, you will most likely need to open a support incident to investigate this in detail. Before that you can try installing the follwing hotfixes on a client to put the binaries to QFE/LDR and see if the issue goes away. Article ID: 981070 "Windows can't open Add Printer" error in a 64-bit version of Win7 or of Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2526028 Printing performance decreases in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2493115 "Access is denied" error when you try to open the Properties dialog box of a shared printer that is connected to a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2466040 Post-install customization does not start after you use Group Policy to configure a deployed printer in Windows Vista, in Windows 7, in Windows Server 2008, or in Windows Server 2008 R2 I'd also like to know what is the frequency of the issue within the same machine. Do you see a print job failure in eventviewer just before the printers go offline? Do you see any other events in event viewer? To rule out SNMP, if you disable SNMP on a given box, does the issue reappear in that PC? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

This used to be an issue with W2k3 that was later fixed. I havent seen much issues with printers offline in w2k8R2 There is only one other reported case with w2k8R2 that i found where the customer decided to disable SNMP and hence was not investigated further. Reading through your notes, you will most likely need to open a support incident to investigate this in detail. Before that you can try installing the follwing hotfixes on a client to put the binaries to QFE/LDR and see if the issue goes away. Article ID: 981070 "Windows can't open Add Printer" error in a 64-bit version of Win7 or of Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2526028 Printing performance decreases in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2493115 "Access is denied" error when you try to open the Properties dialog box of a shared printer that is connected to a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2466040 Post-install customization does not start after you use Group Policy to configure a deployed printer in Windows Vista, in Windows 7, in Windows Server 2008, or in Windows Server 2008 R2 I'd also like to know what is the frequency of the issue within the same machine. Do you see a print job failure in eventviewer just before the printers go offline? Do you see any other events in event viewer? To rule out SNMP, if you disable SNMP on a given box, does the issue reappear in that PC? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

This used to be an issue with W2k3 that was later fixed. I havent seen much issues with printers offline in w2k8R2 There is only one other reported case with w2k8R2 that i found where the customer decided to disable SNMP and hence was not investigated further. Reading through your notes, you will most likely need to open a support incident to investigate this in detail. Before that you can try installing the follwing hotfixes on a client to put the binaries to QFE/LDR and see if the issue goes away. Article ID: 981070 "Windows can't open Add Printer" error in a 64-bit version of Win7 or of Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2526028 Printing performance decreases in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2493115 "Access is denied" error when you try to open the Properties dialog box of a shared printer that is connected to a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Article ID: 2466040 Post-install customization does not start after you use Group Policy to configure a deployed printer in Windows Vista, in Windows 7, in Windows Server 2008, or in Windows Server 2008 R2 I'd also like to know what is the frequency of the issue within the same machine. Do you see a print job failure in eventviewer just before the printers go offline? Do you see any other events in event viewer? To rule out SNMP, if you disable SNMP on a given box, does the issue reappear in that PC? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Were you able to go through the steps above? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Hello Sumesh, seems like we experienced this vice vesa: I've never had this problem on my w2k3 boxes. For your questions: 1. I've three notebooks where the problem occured more than once. the time span between two occurances varies alot. on one notebook i had a difference of less than 5 days, another with about 10 days diference and the third had a difference of something short of three weeks. so nothing in common here. 2/3. the eventlog is as clean as it could be 4. I will try disable on a single box - for test purposes only because as is stated initially i do no want to hide the problem, i want to solve it 5. Just to give a complete picture: as suggested by Leo I'be put some drivers in isolation mode on a few boxes - but the problem still exists Thanks so far Dom

Also try out the hotfixes i mentioned on one of the boxes. Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Dom\mrbsl, Experiencing the same issue myself. Print Servers - Windows 2008 R2 Printers - Xerox WorkCentre 7556, Xerox Phaser 6500 & HP LaserJet 4515 Client PC's - Win 7 64bit with Office 32bit New virtual Windows 2008 R2 print server, SP1 and patched every month. The server containers mutliple print queues for HP and Xerox devices, all whql compatible drivers. Our client machines are Win 7 64bit with Office 2010 32bit (as recommended by Microsoft). The print queues on our server are pushed via group policy to all client machines. On a very small propotion of the win 7 client machines i have witnessed the printer "offline" issue (not at the same time) which is resolved by restarting the print spooler on the client machine. Like yourself, not been able to work out the cause of this issue or reproduce. Once the client PC experiences the issue i'm unable to add any other queues from this server. I am, however, able to add a queue from another print server (same issue as mrbsl). I have seen this issue both locally and when a user remotes into another machine (queues are fine on their local machine at the time though). Interestingly enough, i see a GPO error in the affected client PC's application log when the issue occurs. Event ID 4098 - "Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x800706ba The RPC server is unavailable.' This error was suppressed." There is also the following "error" in the "Microsoft-Windows-PrintService/Admin" log. Event ID 808 - "The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\UNIDRVUI.DLL, error code 0xc1". Keen to understand and resolve this issue - not very efficient running around restarting spooler servers on clients PC's.

Can you try the hotfixes listed above? Does this happen with all OEM printers or just with specific printers? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Thanks for the information Jaydubya1980. I just had another user experience this. I checked the Event Viewer and found four of the following ERRORS in succession: Source: Print Service Event ID: 808 Task Category: Initializing Logged 6/14/2011 1:58:37PM to 2:00:13PM General: The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\PS5UI.DLL, error code 0xc1. See the event user data for context information. Any other error or warnning logged in PrintService/Admin is three weeks away 05/25/2011. So there may be a connection with that error.

Can you please get me a dump of the spooler when the issue occurs on one of the clients? Use the procdump tool with the procdump -ma spoolsv.exe http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx You can upload the dumps along with the following details in a zipped format: Event logs, network trace from client when selecting a printer, time of issue, print server name, IP, one or more of printer name showing offline Workspace: https://sftus.one.microsoft.com/choosetransfer.aspx?key=1233c330-b1e9-4858-99ee-1d0d61aedf16 Password: @5RKVnm)[aDQw I will run a preliminary check on the dumps to see if we can find the cause. Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Hello Sumesh, I've read through the mentioned KB articles and confusingly found that non of 'em addresses the problem I and the others are experiencing. Despite this I requested the fixes and tried to download them. I was only able to download the first one mentioned. Trying to download the other three I only got "HTTP 500 Internal Server Error" messages. As for the question of which printers are affected: I do think I've already answered that question. I've various models from HP, Canon and Kyocera Mita. I chose the whql driver for each printer model. As it turned out, the whql printer drivers are universal for all printer models of each vendor so I have three printer drivers in total. As already stated: Until now I was unable to rule out one of the drivers. I have various combinations of printers on the client machines but I have yet to find a driver combination that is not affected by this problem. To make the confusion even more complete I seem to have exactly one client where the driver isolation mode seems to work - the other clients still have the problem. I've downloaded the procdump tool and will upload the requested information as soon as the problem reoccurs. Until then I will try to read through some more event logs on other machines. Maybe I can find some similarities that will give us a hint. Thanks so far Dominik

Hi Sumesh, seems luck is on my side today. the one client which was supposed to function normally again after enabling driver isolation just came back with the error - and presented me the perfect opportunity to collect the infos you requested. I'm assembling them at the moment and will upload them directly afterwards. Hope you can track it down. Dominik /update: upload is complete

Hello Sumesh, I've read through the mentioned KB articles and confusingly found that non of 'em addresses the problem I and the others are experiencing. Despite this I requested the fixes and tried to download them. I was only able to download the first one mentioned. Trying to download the other three I only got "HTTP 500 Internal Server Error" messages. As for the question of which printers are affected: I do think I've already answered that question. I've various models from HP, Canon and Kyocera Mita. I chose the whql driver for each printer model. As it turned out, the whql printer drivers are universal for all printer models of each vendor so I have three printer drivers in total. As already stated: Until now I was unable to rule out one of the drivers. I have various combinations of printers on the client machines but I have yet to find a driver combination that is not affected by this problem. To make the confusion even more complete I seem to have exactly one client where the driver isolation mode seems to work - the other clients still have the problem. I've downloaded the procdump tool and will upload the requested information as soon as the problem reoccurs. Until then I will try to read through some more event logs on other machines. Maybe I can find some similarities that will give us a hint. Thanks so far Dominik

Hi Sumesh, seems luck is on my side today. the one client which was supposed to function normally again after enabling driver isolation just came back with the error - and presented me the perfect opportunity to collect the infos you requested. I'm assembling them at the moment and will upload them directly afterwards. Hope you can track it down. Dominik /update: upload is complete

Yes. We looked at the spooler dump and see 12 network printers connected to \\CSR|FP0001 with client side ports all in the off-line state with the PRINTER_SERVER_OFFLINE status set. The problem is this snapshot is after the fact so there is no “smoking gun”. The issue needs more indepth troubleshooting. I would request you open a support case because this is going to take some digging. Things to investigate during a support incident- 1. Check the System Log for network disconnections. 2. A TTT trace (in circular mode) with a Procmon, and netmon trace during the problem would be very beneficial. 3. Check if you have anything in the Admin PrintService Analytical log ? If not, you should enable the Debug or Operational logs (Actions-> Enable Log) for the Print Service. Please visit the below link to see the various paid support options that are available to better meet your needs.http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=fh;en-us;offerprophone Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Hello Sumesh, were you able to to take a look on the files I've uploaded? Did they give a hint on the problem? Dom

Hello Sumesh, were you able to to take a look on the files I've uploaded? Did they give a hint on the problem? Dom

I have the same problem, but maybe a more acute version. I am pretty sure the problem started when I installed SP1 on Windows 7 about one week ago on a virtual machine on my laptop. All network printers are consistently offline. Restarting spooler service returns them online, but only temporarily. After every job I print, they all go back offline. Restarting spooler service restores them all. One of the network printers is a direct TCP port connection. Another goes through a print server (not sure what the server is running). Different makes and models of printers. I do have a variant of the error quoted above repeating periodically in my print service error log: The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module C:\Windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\x64\3\UNIDRVUI.DLL, error code 0xc1. See the event user data for context information. I do not see any other interesting clues related to network events in the system log.

Can you try this on one of the clients? To disable SMB1 client functionality run the following commands: sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb20/nsi sc config mrxsmb10 start= disabled Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support