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Printer Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows

Windows 10's Latest Updates Are Causing Havoc On Printers (techradar.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the unintended-consequences dept.
Windows 10 received its monthly host of security patches earlier this week, and the latest cumulative updates are causing serious problems with printers -- particularly Ricoh devices, but also other models. TechRadar reports: The so-called 'Patch Tuesday' fixes released earlier in the week which are causing chaos are KB4557957 and KB4560960, which are for the May 2020 Update and the November 2019 Update. (Note that in one case, KB4561608, for the October 2018 Update, is also mentioned). As one Ricoh owner observed on Reddit: "Has anyone had issues today with printing and the latest Windows update [KB4560960]? We're seeing problems with Ricoh printers that were previously stable. Changing the print driver seems to help but that's going to be a pain if I have to roll it out to too many clients." Other folks with Ricoh printers have chimed in on that thread with similar issues in terms of breaking printer functionality completely, or elements of it, such as causing wireless printing to fail.

Further reports of printer failures include Brother and Canon devices, as well as some Kyocera, HP, Toshiba and Panasonic models. A network technician for a mainly Ricoh dealership also contributed to that Reddit thread, and noted: "After an abundance of service calls these last 2 days, I can confidently say PCL5 [driver] does not work at all, regardless of driver age. Installing the newest version of the PCL6 universal driver *does* seem to work. Not a realistic approach to servicing hundreds of clients, but at least new clients setup before the new patch should be okay." Another solution is to simply uninstall the cumulative update. Thankfully, Microsoft is already working on a fix.
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Windows 10's Latest Updates Are Causing Havoc On Printers More

Windows 10's Latest Updates Are Causing Havoc On Printers

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  • How do you fuck up a printer? (Score:3)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Friday June 12, 2020 @06:48PM (#60177328) Homepage

    I get that physical devices with a lot of moving parts are going to be necessarily complicated, but printers have been around for decades, and sending print jobs to them is a problem that's largely been solved for at least the past 2 decades, if not 3.

    So how the holy fuck does MS keep fucking this up? Or is it the printer manufacturer this time, doing shit they shouldn't be doing?

    • Brother Printer here... Nope, it works like charm in all OS except on Windows 10 + June 2020 patch... worked before...

      So, it's Microsoft who fucked it up big time FOR A THIRD TIME...

      • Same here. Glad I read this. I was getting ready to run out and purchase a new printer, figured this one was toast.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 )

        Brother Printer here...

        Why do you have to make everything about race?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        They fucked up nothing. Testing software has to be done, it always fails at first. You idiots on Windows anal probe 10 are the for free crash test dummies that M$ uses to test their software before the push the patch to corporate and government licences. Now just shut the fuck up, like all the other crash test dummies. Pay your monies and test their software, this is not a failure, this is the for free software testing method working (well not for you sucker) as intended. It really is that bad, they simply

    • Simple, take a standardized printer language driver like PCL5, and start sending commands that don't work! Extra credit if this change was due to a stack exchange suggested copy and paste code update! Easy peasy.
    • It is very simple. Microsoft got rid of most of their QA. They rely on their fast tier customers to find the bugs, then they ignore their bug reports. They also rely heavily on their code AI tools to find bugs.
    • Printer drivers are a holy mess. Pretty much every manufacturer uses some "special sauce" which stretches, bends, or outright violates any standards. Then they put all sorts of weird hooks into the OS to make it work. Half the time MS fucks them up because of problems with the OS, the other half the drivers get jacked because the OEM driver is doing something it's not supposed to.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • most consumer printers run on the razor and blades model [wikipedia.org] where having a long lasting reliable product isn't in their best interest as they can always sell you a new one with more expensive carts, hell its probably better for them if it does break often as then the carts dry out and you have to buy more.

        Brother makes really nice home laser printers that aren't too expensive to run. I just tested and mine prints fine, so I guess this patch didn't affect me. Really, I don't think I'll ever go back to ink-based printers. If I want photos I'll have them printed, or maybe get one of those little dedicated 4x6 printers or something. Laser is so much faster and looks far more professional for last-minute résumés.

        • Re:How do you fuck up a printer? (Score:5, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday June 12, 2020 @08:18PM (#60177578)

          This. You'll also notice that the Windows 10 printer driver for a Brother laser printer is around 5-10MB. Quite different from the 350MB package I downloaded for my parent's HP.

        • I do a ton of bulk printing for a single person realtor. lot's of snail mail
          and it still works well. I upgrade 4 years ago to a brother 2270. Used
          up 3 drums and recycled maybe 30-40 replacement toner cartridges
          I think this will be last drum change coming up.
          I think based on a quick look at the accounting, it's 50000 sheets of
          regular paper and 6000 envelopes and 8000 sheets of post card
          thickness ( 120lbs paper) sheets. These things are abuseable.

          this upgrade was an upgrade from the same type of printer
          10 ye

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            My view on high volume monochrome printing is get a cheap HP LaserJet 4000 series printer of eBay with a low page count (say under 50,000 pages). Pimp the RAM as needed, add a JetDirect card as needed (all second hand), and fit a maintenance kit as needed. These devices are good for in excess of one million pages, and are really cheap to run. My other tip for high volume printing is get one of the large capacity paper trays. Much easier when you can just drop a whole ream of paper in.

            • Thanks, never even thought of looking at anything else in recent times.
              biggest issue I have is printing the postcards on 110 - 120 lbs paper.
              that drum has to get hot otherwise it wont fix the toner.
              so I'll run other stuff first like a 50 page job ( basic print out )
              then my hand feed shit postcards ujuhhgg takes for ever but it pays off for me

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Do the color laser printers work well yet? Last I checked they were both unreasonably expensive and not that great.

        • I got an Epson WF-C5710, which per print is cost and speed competitive with laser, but with Epson ink jet quality. Excellent Linux compatibility as has been common for Epson since the better part of 2 decades, they have been delivering Linux scanner and printer drivers and software since a long while. Also, compared to the photo ink jets, this one was indicating a shortly to be empty ink "sack" (not unlike the foldable sports water bags), and we happily used it for another 5 to 6 months. Since my wife's a t

      • I'm sorry but the drivers for your average printer are deep fried dog anus

        Anybody else hungry all of a sudden?

      • Kind of weird then that the exact same printer has zero problems with Mac OS or Ubuntu or for that matter windows 7 freaks out with this update to Win10.
        Option A - Microsoft code quality is plumbing new depths.
        Option B - Is there one?

        • Kind of weird then that the exact same printer has zero problems with Mac OS or Ubuntu or for that matter windows 7 freaks out with this update to Win10. Option A - Microsoft code quality is plumbing new depths. Option B - Is there one?

          I spent an hour troubleshooting an HP printer at work yesterday that wouldn't print. Printjob would hit the queue and disappear into the ether. It worked last week just fine. None of the Win 10 machines now worked. I thought the printer died but self test still worked. Oddly enough, I installed the driver on Ubuntu and it magically worked again. Then I tested an old Win 7 machine we had lying around. Worked there too. I had to go tell the boss, "tough shit." Microsoft improved the printing system on

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I get that physical devices with a lot of moving parts are going to be necessarily complicated, but printers have been around for decades, and sending print jobs to them is a problem that's largely been solved for at least the past 2 decades, if not 3.

      It's not the complex moving parts that make it hard.

      It's that the printer manufacturers all solve them separately and differently. So the printing subsystem has to handle all these diverse printers, and versions of them.

      There's SOME standardization between SO

    • I get that physical devices with a lot of moving parts are going to be necessarily complicated, but printers have been around for decades, and sending print jobs to them is a problem that's largely been solved for at least the past 2 decades, if not 3.

      I'll wager that it has nothing to do with the printer or Windows and everything to do with the printer drivers that come as 500MB internet connected cloud enabled fucking "drivers". It seems the amount of problems I've had with any printer is directly proportional to the size of the driver download.

      • I'll wager that it has nothing to do with the printer or Windows and everything to do with the printer drivers that come as 500MB internet connected cloud enabled fucking "drivers".

        Yeah, but how are they supposed to send the cloud to you? My printer drivers came with the cloud too, but now that everyone is using it, I doubt you'd be able to print without it. Just get the cloud and it'll probably be fine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The sheer lack of good architecture and design in Win10 is pretty impressive by now. A printer driver should be mostly self-contained and only use standardized system services and libraries. If it does that, it does not care about system updates.

      That said, I have a good reason for using a PostScript capable printer. Works on basically anything and does not need printer-specific drivers. Also networked, so whether I ftp some .ps file to it, netcat some .ps file to a port or whatever, it does not care. Of cou

    • and have practically no printer support at all for decades and act proud of it

    • Dude it's Microsoft. That's how they keep fucking things up. People using Windows get what they deserve. Shit.

  • Installing the newest version of the PCL6 universal driver *does* seem to work. Not a realistic approach to servicing hundreds of clients

    There's a command for that. [microsoft.com]

    • Re:Not a realistic approach? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday June 12, 2020 @07:39PM (#60177470) Journal
      It gets a lot messier if you are dealing with a printer that isn't satisfied with a good, old-fashioned, .inf install. Business class MFPs, of the sort typically leased out by MSPs with a history in copiers, tend to have all sorts of horrible bits and bobs for accounting and job release access control and similar. Not uncommon for stuff like label printers to also have a raft of assorted utilities for tuning for various label stock and loading different barcode symbol sets.

      The "universal" drivers can also be a piece of work; not as bad as the garbage that ships with consumer inkjets; but some combination of wanting to be everything to everyone and sheer hubris leads to a lot of complexity. By way of example, the HP Universal Print Driver has a 240 page system administrator's guide [hp.com]; and that doesn't include the details of how to use the 9 assorted tools that make up the HP Print Administrator Resource Kit. And all of that is for printing, scanning is a whole different story.

      Sane, decent, printers that can be installed by just pointing them at an .inf and clients can install from the print server's driver share are one thing; but the world of print drivers is a horrible place.

      It's honestly a bit puzzling. GPUs are essentially DirectX and/or OpenGL raster image processors that chew on relatively complex inputs, spit out 30+ frames per second worth of rasterized output; and it's considered a fairly serious bug if the GPU driver falls over and dies or you need to spend a bunch of time swearing at it to keep it from going off the 'margins' of your monitor. Printers are much more mature(they weren't cheap or particularly fast, but a 1985 LaserWriter with postscript RIP is architecturally substantially the same animal as a contemporary printer that isn't so cheap it's fully host based); yet they still suck at a less demanding job; and it's just sort of normal.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • WSD, along with the atrocious history of printer firmware quality and security (the HPs whose firmware you can reflash just by sending a print job containing the appropriate PJL are almost charming in how they blow right past glaringly unsafe and into innocent) is one of the major arguments in favor of keeping the printers isolated from everything but their print server. They can't get into nearly as much trouble that way. Drivers are still garbage; especially the ones that don't support spooler isolation a
    • Shouldn't updating the drivers be a normal part of maintenance?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by darkonc ( 47285 )
      Microsoft can mess up just about anything. Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I ran into a problem where adding memory to a laser printer caused the mouse driver to die. Removing the memory fixed the problem.
  • anecdotal evidence says to me this isn't a real problem and couldn't be happening...any problems you are having are obvious Id10T errors.

  • Windows 10 version 2004 won't load on my Dell desktop; it tries, then rolls back to 1909. At least it DOES roll back and boot up properly.

  • Microsoft has to force updates on people or else people might not update themselves. Then they wouldn’t get all the latest bugs..er..I mean security fixes. Updates only fix things and make them more secure, they never make things worse.

    At least that’s the rationale for forcing updates on users.

    Okay, now let’s all recite the pledge of software allegiance:

    “All software has bugs!”

    There, I think we all feel better now. I know Microsoft does.

  • Please someone. Is there a way to prevent Win10 updates? I tried the settings, and I think a while back, I tried the registry, but Microsoft keep enforcing their will on me to have updates.

    Please, I want out. I know, I know, virii and malware. I still don't care (especially due to herd immunity), I want out. Especially as my laptop resets itself without my knowledge, losing work and potentially crashing apps irreparably.

    • Please someone. Is there a way to prevent Win10 updates?

      Yes, there's a simple two-step process and it's a 100% guaranteed way to prevent any further issues with Windows updates:

      1) Save off any important data (photos, files, etc).

      2) Install Linux. Mint, Ubuntu, ElementaryOS, etc etc.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Twinbee ( 767046 )
        Tried Ubuntu a while back. Wasn't happy about the latency/lag in GUI operation unfortunately.

    • Don't allow internet access? I'm sure someone has a list of IPs you can block.

    • Back when I was still on Windows 10 I used to block all ms update websites using pi-hole. That's the easiest way and works on all devices in the network. You can then easily decide when you want to update, backup everything, open pi-hole and allow Windows to run the update. At least it gives you some level of control.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Twinbee ( 767046 )
        Their site doesn't mention anything about preventing Win10 updates: https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Falos ( 2905315 )

        Upstream block is best, but I'd like to think there's some chance to do it on the local machine, though AC says he hasn't found what to block in HOSTS yet. Assuming the OS doesn't disregard ofc. Still, fucking with the registry can go far, maybe achieve access/overwrite of local policies.

        Someday I might need to know how to unfuck win10.

    • Disable Windows Update service?
      • After reading a reply, it seems like disabling the service won't work. There's a group policy setting in Windows to disable all access to Windows Update features, but I hope that isn't rendered useless by Microsoft too...
  • That was driving me nuts trying to figure out why my Brother printer stopped working. Just didn't make sense.

  • PCL5? (Score:2)

    by thsths ( 31372 )

    PCL6 was released in 1996. And the universal driver supports PCL5 and PCL6. If you are still using the ancient PCL5 only driver, I am really not sure why anybody should have sympathy.

    The problem is of course that for the last 20 years, printers have been sold on price, because they are loss making (the profit is in the ink and toner). And the technology is often beyond cheap. Consumers buy it, companies make it - there is plenty of blame to go around.

  • Proprietary printer software in my limited experience is extremely buggy. In all likelihood, some of those bugs were not fatal because MS software was not very tight. Once the latter was fixed, the printer bugs caused trouble.

    I would also guess that part of the problem is that API specs from Microsoft and standards orgs are written primarily in English, while proprietary printer software is written by non-English speakers who might not fully understand the intent of API specs.

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