Printers disappear from printers list on server

[gbl]

We have a problem occurring on our citrix server which may or may not be related to citrix. We are using Citrix metaframe xp and each time this occurs users suddenly cannot print. It may be a problem in an application. When it happens, no printers are listed when I go to start / settings / printers. I can only resolve this by rebooting the citrix server.
Any ideas why this is occurring? Has anyone else had the experience of an application causing the printer settings to disappear?
Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[BeerGood]

Check your system logs (start/program/admin toold/event viewer) for errors like out of memory etc. Check also your running services (start/settings/control panel/admin tools/services) before rebooting the server next time: sort by "startup" and make sure everything that should start automatically is actually started - eg check that print spooler service is still running....

Cheers

 

[plug1]

check what virus software your using, virusscan 4.xx is known to cause this fault and is listed with a fix on thier website... dont know if it affects citrix though.

worth a try.

 

[sm22]

Beergood is on the correct track. Your print spooler is hanging and stopping. Check services to see if the print spooler is started. If it is not, start it. You may find that after the print spooler is started it may crash again. If this happens, make sure your print spooler is stopped then navigate to %systemroot%\winnt\system32\spooler\printers clear anything that is in this folder and start your print spooler again. NOTE: Make sure any pending print jobs are not critical. You will lose them all by using this method.

 

[xs4citrix]

A crashing printer spooler is usually the result of using non TS aware drivers. These are alway's thrid party drivers. Even when distributed as windows 2000 drivers, they may not be 100% TS aware.
If you use any thid party driver, replace them with drivers from the win2k cdrom, and map the client drivernames via the wtsuprnt.inf, or CMC printermapping.

Stefan

http://www.printingsupport.com

http://www.printingsupport.com

Free citrixprinting support

 

[scuzzle]

Definately a print spooler problem, especially if you're running Win2K SP3. I put a scheduled job on each of our servers to restart the print spooler service every hour when we started getting this problem. Seems to have "worked"...but I think microsoft has released a hotfix for this now, and you can find it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;

[LN];324183

It's knowledge base article 324183 if the above link doesn't work correctly. Our supplier has sent this hotfix to me(you have to request it from Microsoft), but I haven't had chance to test it yet.

 

[terrywilson]

Had a look at the printingsupport.com website from the above post; Nice site. Definitely worth a look

 

[gbl]

Thanks everyone for the help. I agree that it is a print spool problem. I have checked the file gdi32.dll on our citrix server and found that it is newer than the version mentioned in kb324183. So far there has been no new incident of printers disappearing!

 

[xs4citrix]

At what win2k/citrix FR/SP level are you?

http://www.printingsupport.com

Free citrixprinting support

 

[BlowIT]

Hi,
I do have the same problem. All printers suddenly disappear. If you log off all sessions and logon again, the printers are mapped again.
The gdi32.dll file is newer because it is installed by citrix, this is not the file that comes with windows 2000.
I 've noticed that the printers do NOT disappear if you use RDP (remote desktop connection) and not ICA. If this also the case in your configuration, than we can assume that the problem is related to citrix and not to windows or any other application.

Regards

Bart Lowagie

 

[Ogi]

Can you stop and start the spooler on the Citrix Server, and does this fix your issue for a short time?

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[ascotta]

Indeed We sometimes get the same issue.
The problem is that the spooler is stopped.
We can restart the spooler and hey presto Mr. Printington is working again. However, there is a funny. If for some reason the server requires a reboot (spooky I know) then the spooler does not restart sometimes. A manual start is often required.

 

[Ogi]

It points to a printer driver issue.

What may be worth doing is setting the Print Spooler to Manual, when restarting the server use an Autoexec script to delete all the spooler files and start the spooler, plus, this would be done automatically without the need to log onto the server. That way you should have less issues when having to reboot a server.

It would be worth spending time to check the installed drivers and try to ensure that they are all compatible.

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[ascotta]

Thanks Carl,

yes I know it probably is a driver issue, but the users (bless them) are spread all over the globe. And kepping an eye on their printers can be trouble some.

However we have set the spooler to restart if it stops and we will be looking closely at all the print drivers.

Thanks.