We've seen an increase in the number of calls from our users stating that when they try to print from Outlook 2007 (Windows XP SP3 + all Updates) they receive an error stating that there are no printers installed. However, they not only have multiple printers installed, but they also have a default printer defined. Restarting the print spooler fixes this problem but its not clear what caused it to begin with. When we stop and eventually restart the spooler, we notice it hangs for a while when stopping and the following appears in the Event Viewer:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7011
Date: 10/20/2009
Time: 9:38:48 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XX-YYY-123456
Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the Spooler service.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7011
Date: 10/20/2009
Time: 9:39:18 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XX-YYY-123456
Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the service.
Related to this, last week we received a number of calls from users telling us that their machines hung during the login process once entering their credentials. Waiting even 20 minutes didn't fix the problem, and rebooting the machine took care of it. We have a lengthy login script so I added lines surrounding, and within, the various functions, calls, WMI queries etc within to figure out what might be causing the problem. Turns out, when the script got to the point where it enumerated the printer list, it hung the machine. (Code below at the bottom.) Once commented out this code, users were logging in fine, and the same timeout error above appeared in the login script. What gives!?
Sounds to me like we have a possible spooler problem, but aside from removing & readding printers and their drivers, I'm not quite sure where else to look, or why this only affects a small percentage of our population, and more importantly, all of a sudden. I'm open to suggestions.
//*Login Script Snippet
login_printer_list= ""
Set colSettings = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_Printer")
' I previously had a 'debug' function that would write to a log file
' just before the For Each statment listing. While the log
' contained the line stating it was starting the process...
For Each objWMI_Item in colSettings
' It didn't process anything beyond the above code as. Where this
' comment is, I had another line where it would output
' objWMI_Item.name in the debug log.
login_printer_list= login_printer_list & "--" & objWMI_Item.name
If objWMI_Item.Default = True Then login_default_printer=objWMI_Item.name
Next
---EOF
Any help is greatly appreciated.
--
Julius G. Perkins, IV
Enterprise Systems
Workstation Architect
