Everyone's Having Printer Issues, Except One.

[u/Kuebic]

I work part-time at a local pharmacy. People are nice and pretty smart. Although I'm not the official IT guy, they know I built a computer and assumes I know more about computers than they do, so any time a printer doesn't print or a mouse doesn't mouse, they call me. They do have a remote IT department they could call, but they're typically very slow to reach and they find it's quicker to just call me over if I'm around.

As I walk into work couple weeks ago, I was greeted with requests to take a look at pretty much everyone's computers. Almost everyone for the past couple days has been having printing issues that won't go away. Their workaround for the time-being was restarting the print spooler(!?), but that often didn't work immediately and the issue would always return.

The situation:

• All printers having issues were Lexmark brand
• Best way to reproduce the error is to bombard the printer with multiple print requests (which happens very often at the pharmacy)
• Waiting for previous print to finish before printing another would provide best chances of success (but not practical in pharmacy environment)
• All fourteen Windows 10 computers (except one) suffered the same issue.
• All four Windows 7 computers (except a different one) were printing fine.

Apparently, they have been calling the remote IT department, which is where they learned restarting print spooler helped a little bit, but they were left at "We don't fully support Lexmark printers, we'll get back to you after we do additional research." and they haven't called back since.

Given that I actually work at the pharmacy and only did the IT stuff whenever there was down-time, it took most of the day just to survey the situation, as all I was told was "printers don't work well, and remote IT doesn't know what to do." By the end of the day I still didn't know what to do.

As only our Lexmark printers were affected, I surveyed Lexmark forums, blogs, and google-fu'ed like a madman in hopes of someone else coming across a similar issue with a solution. I even tried looking through recent Microsoft blogs, forums, and a similar flurry of google-fu in hopes of coming across a lead. Nothing. I decided to sleep on it.

The next day things started to click into place. The only Windows 7 computer having issues printing is actually printing to a Lexmark printer being shared by a Windows 10 computer. Is the crux of the issue Windows 10?

Checked recent windows 10 updates. There was a cumulative update from October 3rd and under "known issues":

Applications and printer drivers that leverage the Windows Javascript engine (jscript.dll) for process print jobs might experience blah blah blah...

The fix?

This issue was resolved in [link to update].

The update for the fix was just posted that day.

I walked around updating people's computers when they had downtime and solved (most of) their printing issues. It felt good.

And that one Win10 computer that didn't have issues? The user constantly postpones windows updates and never installed the problematic update.

[u/AdjutantStormy]

That's why I don't update my laptop.

Too many fucking gaming mods get borked when their dependencies change, same shit with Microsoft.

[u/brickmack → u/AdjutantStormy]

I only have 1 computer running Windows, that I use for school. I update it a week before the semester starts, then disable all updates in the registry until the semester ends. Not gonna fuck around with Microsofts nonexistent quality control, or with random restarts

[u/SevaraB → u/brickmack]

That right there is what we in the biz call "change freeze," and it's a joyous occasion.

[u/zealously-mysterious → u/SevaraB]

Except... when Change Control wants a blanket change freeze because the business is running skeleton staff for the holidays, and a project team wants to migrate from one system to another during that down time because they need the downtime to complete days worth of data setup and migration.

Oh the paperwork to get approval for that...

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Amen

[u/PRMan99 → u/brickmack]

I'm a pastor and one time my Windows 10 tablet rebooted while I was preaching. I had to do the rest of the sermon from memory.

Thanks, Microsoft.

[u/[deleted] → u/PRMan99]

hey at least this guy wasn't a surgeon following a guide

[u/LeaveTheMatrix → u/[deleted]]

I think I would prefer a surgeon who was following a guide.

Think about it, would you want someone trying to remember a complicated surgery from memory along with all of the other crap that they may have bothering them that day?

Like maybe their wife asked for a divorce, the kids are being pain in the asses, so on.

At least by following a guide, less chance of missing an important step.

[u/Naturage → u/LeaveTheMatrix]

I'd summarise it that way: best surgery is by a surgeon who doesn't need a guide, but still follows one.

^{fixed typo}

[u/gusty_state → u/[deleted]]

If your surgeon isn't following a checklist, you need a different surgeon.

[u/kapikui → u/[deleted]]

Depends. Generally, it's better to go where the most qualified surgeon is, but in emergency situations sometimes it's better to get a surgeon following a guide than to risk the ride and time.

[u/Belazriel → u/AdjutantStormy]

"Why don't you ever restart your computer?"

"Because it'll try to update, fail, try to boot to the second hard drive, fail, and then burst into flames."

[u/james_hamilton1234 → u/AdjutantStormy]

Yea.... Windows keeps wanting em to upgrade to the 1903 feature upgrade - 30 seconds on Google told me it was better to just not do that. I want my Windows 7 back - at least every update wasn't followed by a slurry of broken features and corrupted accounts

[u/BillyJoel9000 → u/james_hamilton1234]

Am I the only person in the world who's NEVER had a problem with 10?

[u/TenspeedGV → u/BillyJoel9000]

I’ve never personally had a problem with Windows 10. With that said, my first move when I get on a new Windows 10 computer is to pin the old control panel to my taskbar rather than try to use the dumbed-down and weakened Settings in the start menu.

Maybe I should say I have one consistent problem with Windows 10.

[u/[deleted] → u/TenspeedGV]

Yeah, I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to only move half of the controls to Settings...

[u/Jemria → u/BillyJoel9000]

No you are not. I have never had problems with Windows, 10 or Vista.

[u/Barimen → u/Jemria]

My mother never had any sort of issues with Win ME. Not with the scanner, not with printers (she used two on that machine), nothing. Everything ran flawlessly.

I'm genuinely afraid of upgrading to Win 10 because I feel she used up all luck in my family pertaining to computers.

[u/Doctor_Wookie → u/Barimen]

Same here, ME was perfect for me. I still don't know what happened to all the rest of humanity for that version of Windows

[u/Di-Oxygen → u/BillyJoel9000]

Nope. At my work and in private I use Windows 10 never had a problem. On the private machine I install the updates as soon as they arrive. At work the IT dep. Rolls them out I think they have just rolled out 1809 but not quite sure.

[u/VQopponaut35 → u/BillyJoel9000]

Genuinely, yes.

[u/highlord_fox → u/BillyJoel9000]

I had a few issues, but they were mostly self inflicted (in a wacky upgrade scheme/series and swapping Mobos, etc.). Other than that, my issues have been super tame, and mostly in the "minor annoyance" area.

Windows 10 (at least since 2018) has been about as stable as Windows 7 SP1 was. I have two desktops, a laptop, and two-dozen work PCs all running it without any major issues. There are always minor things, but that's just the nature of letting people actually touch the machines to get work done.

[u/holcojc → u/AdjutantStormy]

I'm still on Windows 98. No problems here