Printer spooler hangs on Terminal Server

The Amyuni PDF Converter is our Printer Driver that enables you to convert any documents to PDF format. If you have any questions about installing and using the Amyuni PDF Converter please post them here.
Post Reply
Aldus@Monitor
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Apr 05 2012
Location: Sweden

Printer spooler hangs on Terminal Server

Post by Aldus@Monitor »

Hi,

We have had an unusual large amount of support regarding printing on Terminal Servers after shipping 5.0.0.7 to our customer. In the 4.0.1.2 version we used before this was much less likely to happen.

There are 2 different situation:
  • Printing hangs for someone causing the printer spooler to hang for everyone. If an IT administrator restart the spooler service the problem goes away for up to a week or so (and then reoccurs).
  • Printing hangs for someone because the queue on the printer spooler is full. If an IT administrator removes all previous jobs the print can finish without restarting the spooler.
Both situations require IT administrators to intervene since the normal TS user does not have the needed Security rights to solve the problem so this problem is very annoying to our end users (and are for some customers costing money since the have to pay extra to call in an administrator in an Outsourced IT environment).

The common problem seams to be that the Printer Driver somehow hangs the spooler and either it just stops the queue or it really hangs the spooler. This problem seams much more common in version 5.0.0.7 than in 4.0.1.2. I got atleast 25 different customers complaining about this problem the last 2 months (eventhou this is the vacation period in Sweden).

Regards
Aldus@Monitor
Aldus@Monitor
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Apr 05 2012
Location: Sweden

Re: Printer spooler hangs on Terminal Server

Post by Aldus@Monitor »

Hello again Alexandre,

Are you an official Representative for Amyuni? You do not have the official Red color on your name and not the "Amyuni Team" under the name.
I can PM our company name since it does not need to be official here on the forum.
  • Our customers use 2003 (32bit), 2008 (32bit or 64bit), 2008R2, 2012, 2012R2 and perhaps Citrix in combination with any of these platforms. I assume the problems are mostly occurring on 2008R2, 2012, 2012R2 server.
  • We use PowerBuilder 10.5.2 for our application for these customers. We produce a desktop application but some customers run it on terminal servers.
  • We use the setting your installation program sets up. And since it is a spooler problem I would assume that most customers use "Spool". Without using Spool it seams difficult for different users to use the printer driver at the same time. I can ask my support Unit for current settings at some of our customers servers if needed.
Regards
Aldus@Monitor
Jose
Amyuni Team
Posts: 553
Joined: Tue Oct 01 2002
Contact:

Re: Printer spooler hangs on Terminal Server

Post by Jose »

Hi,

In order to trouble shoot this issue further we will need specific information about your installation and the workflow used by the Amyuni PDF Converter.

Unfortunately this information should not be made public. Can you please contact our tech support (support@amyuni.com) department directly?

We will post the solution to this issue once the issue is closed.

Thanks
Get PDF Suite, the expert .NET developer toolkit for PDF conversion, creation and editing - www.amyuni.com/pdfsuite
Jose
Amyuni Team
Posts: 553
Joined: Tue Oct 01 2002
Contact:

Re: Printer spooler hangs on Terminal Server

Post by Jose »

Hello,
This issue was resolved by updating the Amyuni PDF Converter to our current v5.0.1.9 version of the Amyuni product.

If updating to v5.0.1.9 version is not possible, a possible solution to this issue is to:

Right click on the Amyuni PDF Converter and select Printer Properties? In the Advanced Tab:
1. Select "Spool print documents so program finishes faster"
2. Select "Start printing immediately"
3. Uncheck the box "Enable printing features"

Thanks
Get PDF Suite, the expert .NET developer toolkit for PDF conversion, creation and editing - www.amyuni.com/pdfsuite
Post Reply