After WU, the local ports of printers on WS 2016 disappear

Question

We have one production server Windows 2016 EN Standard, which runs a critical information system that prints to shared printers, which must be available on the server as local, so they are installed locally on the local port "\Station\SharedPrinter".
About 40 such printers are defined on the server.
From the May cumulative update (and dtto lasts in the June and July updates) after the restart, most of the local ports of these printers will no longer be visible for the print server, even though they are in the registry.

In powershell:
Get-Printer - lists all printers including all their local ports before and after the update
Get-ItemProperty 'registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Ports' - lists all ports before and after the update
Get-PriterPorts - lists ALL printer ports before applying the cumulative update

• after the update it will list only SEVERAL ports.

Consequently, printers whose ports are missing in the Get-PriterPorts listing do not (logically) work.

Uninstalling the cumulative update (currently 2020-07 KB4565511) returns the situation to a functional state.

Does anyone have an idea what it is or how to fix it?

Answer 1

At the end of this issue, problem was neither in printer drivers nor TCP/IP ports, so no advice really helped. But thanks very much for them. Error was apprently on MS side and they repaired it after 4 months.

Vojtech Obrdlik

Answer 2

Hi,

I saw this behaviorr before and wrote also an article about it. First of all, the ports are copied or replicated from the following registry key . HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors\Standard TCP/IP Port\Ports . Basically if you backup and import this registry key the spooler service will get it from their and place it everywhere, where it needs. But your problem isn't a port problem.

The reason is as follows. Before such a cumulative or convenience update the installer backups up the whole \spool folder (driver, ports etc.) if an printing related component like the local print provider localspl.dll or remote print provider like spoolss.dll, Universal Printer Driver unidrv.dll etc. is included inside the cumulative or convenience update.

I saw that on some Servers or PC's the installation or upgrade failed but it did not throw an error or exception and the installer deleted accidentally some of the custom printer driver files. As a result printers disappeared. If you uninstall that update Windows re-applies the backed up update. That's the reason why it works again once you uninstall the update.

Printers mostly disappears if they have and missing component. You can basically verify or proof this by copying the \spool folder before and after the update or upgrade and compare it with an comparison tool. If you have already an comparison tool use it , if not you can use windiff.

Basically adding the drivers for the missing printers with "rundll32 printui.dll" will fix your problem, but it must be the exact same version of the driver which you use right now.

In the solution section of this article I have explained it in detail how to add the drivers with "rundll32 printui.dll" after an update or upgrade. Don't be surprised with the article name below. It is the correct article.

http://www.kuskaya.info/2019/04/29/how-to-troubleshoot-word-cannot-print-there-is-no-printer-installed-error-message/

Hope it helps.

Good luck !

Cengiz Kuskaya

Answer 3

Hi,
Did the issue happen on all the 40 printers?
And could you please try to find an issue printer and update to the universal version 4 driver and then install the patch after this update? Will the issue happen in this case?

Best regards,
Phoebe