SP3 anyone?

[tina2]

Has anyone run into any problems with SP3? I do not have the luxury of a test server, and I would appreciate any heads-up anyone can give.

Thanks in advance.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

SP3 has been out a little while now - and I haven't seen any issues that relate to it (yet!). It seems fairly solid.

IMO, a test Terminal server is anything but a luxury - a cheap old pentium 100 with 256Mb RAM will do the job just fine. Have a look at my FAQ's on testing - I hope they're useful.

(just my $0.02)

 

[colcol]

I have installed SP3 on my test server and have no issues, I have still not installed to the live enviromet though

 

[tina2]

Okay, so I installed it last Wednesday, and Thursday morning the Print spooler started terminating unexpectedly. I spent several weeks troubleshooting printer drivers pre-SP3, and have applied the necessary woraround to get all of my drivers compatible. To the best of my knowlege, the print spooler has not crashed in the past.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Tina

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Which Service pack are you running on the O/S? - I'm assuming it's NT4 TSE. This is odd - I've seen more cases of SP3 fixing spooler issues from SP1 and 2 than causing them!

You probably have a print job hung in a print queue, if it's definitely not a bad driver. Stop the spooler service and then go into the %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers directory and delete/move any SPL, SHD or TMP files that are in there. Once you have done that restart the Spooler service.

Have a look at technet articles Q240683 and Q227675.

Make sure that none of the printers are set to be bi-directional.

If all else fails, try configuring another NT4 server to be a Printer server and re-map the printers to it.

I hope this helps

 

[Frodo29]

Microsoft has posted knowledge of a known bug caused by Windows 2000 SP3 on terminal servers. You can read about this on the newsgroup at

http://communities.microsoft.com/ne...oup=microsoft.public.win2000.termserv.clients

hope, this helps

regards
Ralf

 

[irishnick]

I have installed SP3 on all three of my Citrix boxes. I took the chance and installed it. No problems.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I think the original post was for MetaFrame 1.8 SP3. I'm not moving Windows 2000 SP3 to live for at least a couple of months; until I fully understand the implications of all the new enhancements, particularly to Terminal Services and licensing.

It would be very interesting if you could keep us posted with your experiences. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[tina2]

Hey citrix engineer,
My original post was over a year ago. My, how time flies! I was talking about MetaFrame 8.1 SP3 (BTW I did solve the print spooler problem) ;-)

I have installed Windows 2000 SP3 on my personal workstation, and have had no problems. I look forward to hearing what it does in a Citrix environment.

Kristine

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Glad you're still with us, Kristine - was it my suggestion that fixed your printer issue, or did you find another way?

I too have SP3 on my Desktop, with no issues - although I'm intrigued about the new EULA; Look here for a slightly paranoid view of it

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26698.html

So far my tests have drawn no issues - but there's always time CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[vpq]

I too Installed Win2K SP3 on my XP FR2 server. The spooler continually crashed. I have had to remove all print drivers and run with the standard HP Laserjet II driver and have all UPD printers.

The other problems I now have are that users can see all autocreated printers that aren't in their own session and printers no longer connect when starting a session through the internet with NFuse. The strange things is, if I look in the printer configuration utility, the printers have auto created, by aren't connected. I can right click on them and connect them manually.

Has anyone experienced this?

VPQ

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I'm still running SP3 in Test, and have discovered some local client printer issues. MS article Q328020 goes some way to resolving them, but they still don't seem to autocreate like they did - and I get this non-connection issue too.

Q326801 makes interesting reading. I Quote "This behavior occurs because post-SP3 versions of the hotfixes may not include the latest updates and fixes that are compatible with the installation of SP3 for Windows 2000." So what M$ are saying is that "Post" SP3 hotfixes are not as up-to-date as SP3.

I also found this draft in Citrix's KB CTX015294, although I never install the client database until after I've built my servers - then I only install it on servers that I run Client Update from.

My recommendation is avoid using SP3 on ANY live Windows 2000 server until you personally have verified it in test; There are a huge number of changes in this Service Pack.

Use this site to help you;

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp3/

And this;

http://www.labmice.net/articles/win2000sp3.htm

Note particularly any Terminal Services related articles, as these are very likely to affect YOU if you administer Citrix MetaFrame for Windows servers.

My guess is that the patches will start rolling out very soon...although if you look at Q322842, it's apparent that not only are there several already, but some were released before Service Pack 3

CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I think Citrix must scan this site - look at CTX681954 CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk