printer and icon questions 2

[edfair]

First, the problem is solved, but I'm interested in suggestions of what happened and of possible better diagnostics for resolving the problem in the future.

XPpro working fine until about 10AM Thursday, 14th when the user decided to let it do an auto update. AT that point the printers went away, and the add printer wizard became non-responsive. Everything else was working fine.

Other threads, other forums, and other support sites suggest that the spooler had died. But that was not true. Spooler message indicated that it was running. After running out of ideas I restored to Monday 11th. At this point the printers were still missing, but the wizard came back to life and allowed a printer to be added. It added as a 2nd version, 3rd version, and 4th version apparently without fail as it generated a test page and allowed command prompt to print to it, but it didn't add the icon or allow any of the gui links to work. I also followed the MSKB suggestions for manual removal of the printers in order to clean stuff out in case of corruption but that didn't help.

Final step was a restore to Monday 4th. Printers and wizard were all OK.

Can I assume that the restore to the 11th was not a total restore to the 11th? Or that the auto upgrade corrupted something that wasn't covered in the restore? But then why was the restore to the 4th a success?

Gotta ask it. My XP experience is woefully inadequate, and with this as a negative experience, it may be at an end.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[linney]

Which update do you suspect as causing the original problem?

I don't pretend to know the answers to your questions about System Restore, at least it eventually fixed the problem belatedly.

Did the Event Viewer have any strange errors or warnings for that time frame?

Like you found out, most of the information on the Add Printer Wizard leads to the Print Spooler.

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/FAQPrinting.htm#_Toc71281742

This seems to be some problem caused by the Update or just an unknown glitch, in any case it wouldn't hurt to run the System File Checking program in case other corruption is waiting to happen.

 

[bcastner]

I am betting it was KB 885250.

 

[edfair]

linney,
Event viewer didn't even cross my mind. SFC was happy wherever I was. I had been on your link as part of the diagnostic path.

bill,
Seems more a combination of two since revision back 1 step failed.

Thank you both. As you can imagine, I now have a new restore point.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[bcastner]

It is important to state what system restore does and does not do, it is very far from a state save restoration:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...y/en-us/dnwxp/html/windowsxpsystemrestore.asp

In addition, KB 885250 was pushed on 2-8-2005 by Automatic Updates.

 

[bcastner]

I should clarify: "In addition, KB 885250 was pushed on 2-8-2005 by Automatic Updates."

When you received it is an unknown. Generally speaking, it is better to revert automatic updates through Control Panel, Add/Remove programs.

Now, this is not one of your Lantastic networks, is it?

 

[edfair]

Happens to be one rather obscure node of a lantastic network. By obscure, I mean nothing mapped in or out.

And raising the question is interesting. My only XP is home on a lantastic network. I've kept updates off. May just try them to see if that is a problem.

 

[bcastner]

Cannot Add Printers and printers disappear or do not show up after installing any windows updates to an existing LANtastic 8.01 Windows 2000 or Windows XP machine."
Spartacom, document T20220:

Work Around:
1. Rename c:\%windir%\system32\printui.dll printui.old. (This is an Artisoft file)
2. Rename c:\%windir%\system32\Mprintui.dll to printui.dll (mprintui.dll is the Microsoft version which LANtastic renames upon install)

The update renames printui.dll to Mprintui.dll. In %windir%\SYSTEM32 rename Mprintui.dll to printui.dll and copy it to %windir%\SYSTEM32\dllcache.

After that step, Add Printers will work, but still no printers. Reboot and the printers will appear again.

 

[edfair]

I must of overlooked that one when I was on the Spartacom site.

Thank you.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.