dc_printfile problem blowing out printers

[BruceN]

We've had a few customers (and now us) who have had a REALLY weird thing happen. We create a text file (report.txt) for the report, then use dc_printfile to print it.

The report.txt file is created. It shows fine with the lpreview option .t., but when we print it, it goes to never never land and (this is the weird part) ALL the printers are deleted form the windows printer list. If we try to reinstall the printers we get local print spooler service not running. we have to do a system restore to last good boot to get things back.

Here, it is happening on a win 7 notebook and our 2008 R2 server.

It happens on EXEs that are current and on one that is months old and worked fine until today. deleting all OBJs and recompiling doesn't change anything.

Has anyone ever seen this before?

thanks,

bruce

[Wolfgang Ciriack]

I have seen the same behavior with a wrong printer driver for a HP1020 under Win7 64bit when printing PDFs from the acrobat reader.
You must delete the files under windows\system32\spool\..... (don't know the hole path in the moment) and then restart the spool service,
the all printers were back again.

[BruceN]

VERY INTERESTING... (with apologies to artie johnson from laugh-in). I had just hooked up an old hp 1020 printer to my 2008 server (which, i believe, is basically a 64 bit win7 on steroids).

What are the RIGHT print drivers for the 1020 and where can i find them?

[Wolfgang Ciriack]

You will find a basic driver on hp.com. I find the best is to install the printer connected to usb, then you can change to ethernet with setting up an standard tcp/ip Port (if it is a 1020N printer).

[Wolfgang Ciriack]

Hi Bruce,
you have a folder spool\printers, there are the print jobs, which you can delete.

Open the windows services, search for print queue, restart it with right mouse button, all printers will be shown again.

[BruceN]

- got the drivers from hp.com... still had issues. hmm. may be just replace printer and hope none of our users have one.

- there are a bunch of things under windows\system32\spool\.. what needs to be deleted and how do you restart the print spooler without rebooting?

thanks,

bruce

[Wolfgang Ciriack]

Hi Bruce,
my answer is one item earlier than your question, it was not easy to give the answer before your question

[rdonnay]

my answer is one item earlier than your question, it was not easy to give the answer before your question

This was my fault. The time and date was set incorrectly on the server. When I changed it, that caused a few postings to show in improper order.

[BruceN]

still having issues....

On xbase 331 and express 245 it ALWAYS works without a problem. On xbase 335 and express 254 we sometimes have the printer blowout problem. (on those customers who have the issue, if i put them back on the older code it works fine.)

Strange... some reports will work fine and others crash. and it isn't the same reports on all systems. Yet all reports are created the same way.

Any thoughts? I'm thinking of temporarily trying to print from a batch file or runshell. rather than dc_printfile.

thanks,

[BruceN]

correction: it has happened on 2 xp machines as well as win7