[THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins

  • From: "Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com" <jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 04:55:54 -0700 (PDT)

Maybe so but search through the archives of this list, google,  or even the 
Citrix forums and it will be made clear that the Citrix Printing service is 
singled out as the culprit for system hangs.  The fact that there are so many 
different versions of it out there show that Citrix has been trying to tweak it 
and get it right. I'm not blaming them, I'm simply pointing out that the 
Windows spooler on a multiuser environment needs a good kick in the seat of the 
pants every so often and this is the easiest (and free) way to go about it.  It 
worked back in the day of Winframe, Metaframe, and Metaframe XP and it works in 
CPS.  It is rare I get a call at my help desk about a Citrix Printer problem 
and when we do it is usually tracked to something else totally unrelated. 
(person trying to print a java/shockwave page, etc.)
   
  Jim
   
  

Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@> wrote:
    My 2 cents for what's it worth, I have several clients running UPD3 that do 
not have any problems with it.  The only clients that I have that do have 
problems are ones that are running old versions of languages like Foxpro and 
Powerbuilder.  I've had very good success implementing the UPD.  Of course, 
this was after HRP1.  
   
  Of course, if you've had other print drivers on the servers, simply deleting 
them from printers and faxes, server propertis does not always remove the print 
drivers cleanly and I've had to have clients rebuild their servers to guarantee 
that drivers were not interferring and that has worked quite successfully. 
   
    Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
  Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com


 
  On 8/8/06, Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com < wrote:       The print services 
have been inherently buggy for quite some time since Citrix introduced their 
own little print service (cpsv.exe) to the mix on top of the Windows Spooler 
services.  Rick Mack found the Color Laserjet 4650 wreaked havoc on this 
driver.  There are SEVERAL hotfixes that contain the cpsv.exe service. I 
suggest you check your versions of it and make sure you have the most recent.  
Further set up a scheduled .cmd batch job that contains the following:
Call it preset.cmd or something like that.
   
  net stop CpSvc
net stop spooler
echo y | del c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.*
c:\timeout.exe 5
net start CpSvc
net start spooler
   
  (you can pick up the timeout utility from http://autothin.com/timeout.zip )
  Then add this script to run if the Spooler service fails. It should solve 
your problem.  I have this going every 2 hours scheduled on all my servers and 
never had a printing problem.  The occasional blip where a print job just 
happens to be running at the same 5 seconds this is running  and gets lost far 
outweighs no one being able to print. 
   
  Jim Kenzig

     
   
  

Chris Grecsek <cgrecsek@> wrote:
      No ? memory and cpu optimization are both off. We won't get into the 
problems we saw with those two lovely tools. J 
   
      
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of M
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 3:28 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins

   
    Just as a matter of interest, are you using the Citrix memory Optimizer at 
all ?

     

      ----- Original Message ----- 

    From: Chris Grecsek 

    To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

    Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 10:45 PM 

    Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins 

     

  We've been cursed by the cpsvc.exe hang again as well?our theory had been to 
not patch unless having a specific problem (because of Citrix's pretty awful 
history, that others are noting, with patches breaking things that were 
previously working fine) but the other day we had the issue crop up out of the 
blue and so we decided to install the 69 patch in the HOPES that this would 
actually "fix" a problem for once. Unfortunately this morning we got the same 
hanging at login scripts/cpsvc.exe problem on the patched server. So, once 
again ? the patch didn't fix anything. We rebooted pre-patch and checked event 
logs and had no installations problems with the patch. 
   
  We're only using UPD and so there's no poorly written print driver to blame ? 
this is pretty much all on Citrix. 
   
  We've already implemented two different methods/programs for capturing crash 
dumps (that Citrix recommended) but they are failing to capture anything. In 
the past, the other work around we've had for this was to make the cpsvc.exe 
restart if it stopped (not optimal as it still impacted users) and that had 
been working fine up until yesterday ? today, no such luck?and so the issue has 
been raised back up the flagpole and we're following up with Citrix again? 
   
  Will keep you posted if we find anything new and startling ? but don't hold 
your breath! :p 
   
   
      
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Evan Mann
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 7:35 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] RE: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins

   
  Considering that a Citrix released update brought back a previous printing 
issue, I do find them at fault.  They were able to not have this problem in the 
past, something they did made it come back.  And I see that historically over 
the years in the Citrix support forums.  They fix it, release a new update and 
break it, and then fix it again.  Rinse and repeat. 
   
    
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Jeff Pitsch
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 10:30 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins 
    How exactly do you expect Citrix to fix crappy print drivers?  Or badly 
written programs that use crappy print drivers?  Seriously, kernel mode drivers 
cause the exact problems your seeing how is that Citrix's fault? 

     

    Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
  Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com
  

 

    On 8/8/06, Evan Mann < emann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
      How exactly do I remove the old UPD's?  The most I can find on Citrix 
Support site is to go into the HKLM\Citrix\UniversalPrinterDriver key and into 
the PCL5c, PS, and PCL4 subkeys and change them to point to "Citrix Universal 
Printer" instead of the old UPD aliases.  
   
  I've never had a client under 9.00, since I rolled out a new farm with PS4 
and this client, it from what I've read, 9.x clients will always use the new 
UPD.  Not sure if that is accurate.  All my mapped printers show "Citrix 
Universal Printer" in the printers folder (or a native driver).  So this may 
not be the issue. 
   
  I've allowed kernel model drivers on the servers to see if this helps.  It's 
not preferred, but I have a lot of older drivers out there on my network print 
servers/clients, some of which are integrated with applications I cannot 
change. 
  
Additionally, I set the recovery on Citrix Print Manager to "restart the 
service", it was previously set to do nothing, and it looks like the Citrix 
server itself was just seeing the .EXE crashed and re-launched it.  Maybe a 
full service restart with calm some of the calls for now. 
   
  Might need to open a case and do logging on the servers. I wish Citrix would 
stop breaking printing after they fix it.  Some pre-R01 hotfixes solved this 
same extract problem, and now in R01+post hotfixes, it's back. 

   
    
---------------------------------
  
    From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Chartier, Richard

    Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 10:11 AM

    
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins 

    
 


      Start with a few servers and remove the UPD ver II drivers, I don't know 
your environment so the only things I can suggest is what we did to correct the 
problem. We had a case open with Citrix and have debug traces which prove it 
was in our case the color laserjet driver. 
   
  At one point in time we had UPDII, and UPDIII drivers installed and all 
worked fine until we started upgrading ICA clients, this is when the cpsvc 
service on servers would randomly hang. The cpsvc service hanging is what 
actually causes the client to hang at running logon scripts. 
  To resolve the issue we began by disabling logons on a few servers at a time 
(we have about 100 blade servers) and removing the 3 UPD ver II drivers and 
leaving the new UPD ver. III 
   
      
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Evan Mann
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:05 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] RE: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins

   
  Can you give me a little more detail on this process, or a link to info on 
how to do this?
   
   
    
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Chartier, Richard
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:03 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins 
  We had the same issue and a corrupt upd ver2 driver was the issue. We ended 
up removing all print drivers except the new  upd ver3 and all tested fine. 
  I hope this helps.
   
      
---------------------------------
  
  From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Evan Mann
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 8:52 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Citrix Printer Manager crashing, hanging logins

   
    I know someone posted on this recently, but I can't remember the context of 
the posts to find it in the archives.

     

    I updated PS4 to R01 and a bunch of post R01 hotfixes, including 069.  
Things were great (for the most part).  My dell printers stopped working using 
the Dell drivers, so I changed them to UPD and things were good.  I had 
problems with some HP PCL6 drivers, so I changed those to UPD and things were 
good. 

     

    I'm also seeing a TON of eventlog errors aobut kernel mode blocking prevent 
drivers from being used.  I do not recall this prior to R01+hotfixes. 

    
Yesterday, the Citrix Print Manager on all 6 of my servers started crashing, A 
LOT.  It restarts, but not properly.  Users get stuck at "applying logon 
scripts".  I have to kill it and restart it manually to resolve the problem.  

    
The event log is useless, and I'm not sure how to fix it. I have clients on 
9.100, 9.150, and 9.200.  I'm wondering if the 9.200 users might be causing it 
since there have been spotty reports with it.  Since it didn't happen from day 
1, the only thing I can assume is flipping more printers to the UPD is causing 
it. 

    
Any suggestions on how to diagnose this and get it solved ASAP?  It's 
generating dozens of a calls a day to the help desk.

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