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Printer Windows Operating Systems

Windows 10 Updates Are Causing Even More Printer Problems Than First Thought (betanews.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the printers-suck dept.
Following reports that a recent update to Windows 10 was causing blue screens as well as problems with printing, Microsoft issued a new series of updates to address the issues. But it seems that the problems caused by this month's Patch Tuesday updates are actually worse than first thought. BetaNews reports: Users with certain brands of printer experienced APC_INDEX_MISMATCH errors and blue screens, but now Microsoft has issued a warning that there may be additional problems with elements missing from print outs, or even entirely blank pages being output. The problematic updates are KB5000802, KB5000808, KB5000809 and KB5000822. In the support documentation for these four updates, Microsoft acknowledges the APC_INDEX_MISMATCH error problems and BSoDs, and directs people to install the relevant patches for their system. But the company now also acknowledges that there are more problems with the original updates than first appeared to be the case.

For each of these four updates Microsoft issues the same warning: "After installing updates released March 9, 2021 or March 15, 2021, you might get unexpected results when printing from some apps..." There is currently no fix, and Microsoft is not even able to offer a workaround right now. Instead, the company simply says: "We are working on a resolution and estimate a solution will be available in the coming days."
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Windows 10 Updates Are Causing Even More Printer Problems Than First Thought More

Windows 10 Updates Are Causing Even More Printer Problems Than First Thought

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  • Webcams, now printing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @07:52PM (#61177816) Homepage

    Seems odd randomly webcams were broken, then printing even though no actual development of any new features is happening here.

    So basically it's kind of obvious to me, the spying updates to harvest webcams (allowing more than one app to use them at a time so you can't stop anyone else by opening the camera first) and now the updates to harvest printing is randomly breaking printing despite no new features.

    Obvious spyos is obvious.

    • Re:Webcams, now printing? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @08:39PM (#61177938) Homepage Journal

      Win 10 seems less and less stable and reliable for every time there's an update and it's unclear what some of the updates actually do.

      And I agree that it feels like the spying on the users is just getting worse all the time. And we all suffer from it and are forced to use Win 10 because there are some applications that only runs on it that we have to use in some parts of our daily lives.

      The TV show "Max Headroom" and the books "1984" and "Brave New World" weren't instruction manuals, they were warnings.

    • Re:Webcams, now printing? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by adrn01 ( 103810 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @12:19AM (#61178374)
      Maybe checking what is printed against what ebooks are currently popular, to check for copyright infringement??

      • Re:Webcams, now printing? (Score:4)

        by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @01:40AM (#61178458)
        Not really applicable. Printing a local copy of pages from an ebook, online newspaper, or other copyright material would almost certainly fall under the fair use exemption. It's more likely that a locally printed page would be for personal use and not be used for commercial profit. If someone was going to republish something covered by copyright, it's unlikely the printed page would be the media they would use.

        --

  • Voluntary updates. (Score:3)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @07:54PM (#61177818) Journal

    There is currently no fix, and Microsoft is not even able to offer a workaround right now. Instead, the company simply says: "We are working on a resolution and estimate a solution will be available in the coming days."

    Ah the benefits of auto-updates. Good thing people don't print anymore. ;-)

    • Ah the benefits of auto-updates.

      Too bad we'll have to sue them to be able to turn it off. This is where a class action would actually benefit us

    • As always /. is way behind the news. This was fixed March 18th.

    • Re:Voluntary updates. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WorBlux ( 1751716 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @02:59AM (#61178576)

      It's at least obvious that the developers don't regularly use printers.

      Same problem of Windows becoming and I/O hog once the devs got SSD's. They just didn't notice anymore, and it made windows suck (even more) for anyone useing older hardware or a VM.

      • Architects should be forced to live in the buildings they design, and devs should be forced to use their software on the oldest, slowest supported hardware.

      • It's at least obvious that the developers don't regularly use printers.

        As I have said many times on here, it's obvious developers don't have any clue how people work in the real world. Case in point is our asset management system based on Microsoft's CRM. We had it configured to show everything about an asset on one page. The entire who, what and where.

        Last year Microsoft thought it would be nice to force everyone to "upgrade" to its newest CRM. You know, to standardize things. Whereas before we could s

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by JimMcc ( 31079 )

          It's not just Microsoft. An app I use heavily for work has a wildly inconsistent user interface clearly different modules were written by different teams that never communicated.

          The date entry is a perfect example. The absolutely best date entry routine I've seen allows me to type 319221 and it gets entered as 03/19/2021. It's brilliant. I'd love to see the code.

          The worst virtually forces you to use a point and click calendar interface. Once you do manage to click the right spot to use the keyboard to enter

      • Windows ain't done until print jobs won't run!
    • Microsoft: Making the "paperless office" a reality.
  • they are all trash.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      You'll have to pry my FX-100 out of my cold dead hands.

      • They still make paper for those things?

      • I have to wonder, though -- since most printers do their rendering in the (likely now incompatible) driver, wouldn't PostScript/PCL-native printers be less susceptible to these problems?

        • Printer Drivers (Score:4, Insightful)

          by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @12:23AM (#61178382)

          In the early days of computing, PC printers did not have a CPU. Or not a big one. So the rendering was done on the main computer and the dots sent down the parallel port. It is good engineering, use the expensive CPU for multiple jobs. Postscript printers were much more expensive.

          The design remains.

          What I want to know is how any bug in a printer driver could crash Windows. Are they really running in kernel mode? They should absolutely just be a user process.

          • Re:Printer Drivers (Score:5, Informative)

            by Retired ICS ( 6159680 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @02:08AM (#61178496)

            This is exactly backwards. In the olden days the characters to print were sent down the parallel cable to the printer, and the printer printed the characters.

            Then these "WinPrinter" things (and WinModems and WinDildo's and WinWhatever, including WinRAID) that allowed the manufacturers to build simpler (cheaper) devices and moved the rendering functions into the Windows GDI or the Windows Drivers. These WinThings were not devices that could be used on anything but Windows. They were designed for (and commonly only used by) the proletariat.

            • Agreed. And even for those who do run Windows, winprinters weren't a boon because if the manufacturer stopped updating the driver you could lose access to your printer.

        • Nope, it all has to do with app privileges now, what used to be a program you printed from is now an app, and MS does not know how to properly implement that as was initially evidenced with initial printing of pdf from edge reared itâ(TM)s ugly head

  • How about the other driver issues that cause repair looping, update loops, bitlocker fits, default setting changes and mcafee crap? Well I cant blame them for mcafee... I think they have lots of internal qc changes to make.
  • .. the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
  • It seems that Microsoft does nothing well.

    • It seems that Microsoft does nothing well.

      "The only thing Microsoft could ever make that wouldn't suck is a vacuum cleaner"

      old joke, but still accurate:

    • They do plenty of things well: make money, keep the share price growing, keep the investors happy.

      But Nadella-era Microsoft clearly doesn't want Windows to be the desktop OS it had been for many years before, at least not unless you're willing to fork over the big bucks for the top editions.

      The real problem for users is that MS had that near monopoly power for so long that there is little effective competition either. The alternative platforms are mostly playing the same games for the same reasons, and peop

      • Nadella has been plowing the lion's share of resources into Azure for years, which partly explains why the Hafnium exploit went unfixed for 3 major Exchange releases.

        Windows desktop is mostly meant to be ChromeOS for O365 and Azure delivered services.

        • Indeed. Nadella is delivering the strategy he was presumably hired to deliver. It's just unfortunate for the little guy that the strategy involves throwing traditional desktop Windows under a cloud-hosted distributed event bus.

    • Agreed! Especially since Gates left.

      And yet people and corporations continue to patronize them!

      It's like voting for Trump: you know it's not going to turn out good, yet many still do it!

      My Linux systems have been MUCH better - for YEARS!

  • Win10? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @08:38PM (#61177930)
    If you're using Win10, printer issues are the least of your worries.
  • that by now, they would have figured this all out. But Nooo!

  • selectable updates (Score:4, Insightful)

    by discovercomics ( 246851 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @09:10PM (#61178028) Homepage
    Time to return to the option of selectable updates
  • Ive had to increasingly do 2 or 3 manual reboots to finish the update sthe last few months also. I dont really want to leave a port open for remote shutdown and virtual machine emulation - that might be the cause but windows has always been that way to a certain degree. They should take over BIOS development also..

    This bug could be an unintended consequence of fixing the print.dll etc to keep out the computer rodents so prevalent these days.

  • Why did no one tell us? That's a lot of patches, bug fixes, support articles, and what-have-you. We could have thrown a party!
  • LMAO. not the first time Microsoft/Windows update has SCREWED Up printing, etc. After Win Update years ago, couldn't print in color from Office !

  • Shouldn't have to say this, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @10:40PM (#61178254)

    Printing something shouldn't crash the OS. This problem seems really stupid.

  • Sometimes the 'fix' claims it doesn't apply to your system. So there are other fixes that don't require Windows Update to cooperate.

    But realistically, you should be able to resolve it simply by switching to a different printer driver... so long as your applications will work with an available alternative that doesn't also trigger a BSOD on use.

  • Then there are printers. It is amazing how little this technology has advanced. While SpaceX is landing rockets (sometimes) we're all still paying for HP's inability to conceive tech beyond replacement roller and fuser kits.
  • I was sad when W10 came out and I found that they hadn't revamped it. Critical functions such as deleting stuck jobs are left up to the driver, so when the driver malfunctions, you can't do anything. You need to kill the service and manually delete the files from an obscure system folder. The handling of printing ports is an opaque and mysterious stack of hacks harkening back to the time of actual physical ports.
  • With Win7 my printer worked just fine. With Win10 it just simply does not find it even though it is connected to the wi-fi and ready to do it's stuff. Win10 is a curse.

  • Let users REMOVE the patch to the "before" state without requiring to create a system snapshot.

    Also, stop forcing updates down the throat to users: you already broke my printer last year with your patches.

  • Why does windows hate printing so so much? They have never made printing or sharing printers easy ever.

    • Meanwhile, our antique HP laser, 15 year old Epson inkjet, and 20 year old HP scanner still work great with our Linux PCs.

  • I'm pretty sure that we are WELL past the time that the fully paperless office was predicted, by like 20 years. Therefore, you don't need to ever print anything. Problem solved. "By design."

  • Earlier this week I went to print a label on our Dymo Label printer and it just printed a blank label. Long-story-short the solution was to install a much earlier version of the printer driver. It hasn't f'ed up my other printers, thankfully.

    So, Microsoft -- this is why I want to turn off automatic updates and update my PCs only after the updates have been out in the wild for a while and any such problems fixed -- how about giving me that ability back?

  • Snce we have a Kyocera printer we are greatly affected. Even if we are able to get the printer to work other apps may exhibit probems. Got a similar error after the update when starting Powerpoint on one machine. The best solution is to uninstall (or keep uninstalling as it keeps updating, thanks Microsoft!) the problematic updates, it is the only workable solution presently.

  • For folks at Microsoft:
    You actually have a nice technology called "System Restore". Please do use it

    Isn't this the entire reason for reserving 10% of our C: drive so that we can roll back faulty software installations? Just offer this as a workaround, and let people roll back to a stable version. No need to "please stand by and don't print anything until we come up with a rescue" stuff.

  • These screw-up are HORRENDOUS!

    MS MUST change this.
    And, they MUST compensate ALL users for this screw-up!

    How is it that MS can get away with the control they are forcing on innocent users?

    Microsoft MUST, for starters, release this hold on forcing updates.
    The whole MS software structure needs to be changed.

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