Protection faults using Laserjet drivers on Windows 2003 Server

[Geni Hawkins]

(I tried asking this question over in the printers forum, and they referred me over here.)

I recently upgraded several of my print servers to Windows 2003. Since the upgrade, the printers' preferences cannot be viewed, either from the XP workstations or from the servers themselves. Trying to view print preferences yields the error message:

Function address 0x4f4c4a04 caused a protection fault (exception code 0xc00000005).

I tried getting the latest drivers from the HP website and installing those, but that has not changed the problem. I have also tried different drivers for several of the printers; for the 2300 printers, the 2200 driver seems to work without producing the problem. I have not yet found a solution for the 1300 or 4200 printers. The NT 4 PCL driver for the 1300 seems to work, but I'm leery of using it on 2003 Server. Laserjet 4 drivers also seem to work okay, but again, I'd really prefer a driver that was actually written for this OS and this printer. I've found no solution at all for the 4200.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it. I've tried everything I can think of.

[Andre Thompson_1]

Hi Geni

1. Before you did the upgrade, did you do a winnt /checkupgradeonly command?

2. When you did the upgrade, did you do an inplace upgrade or did you wipe the server completely and reinstalled from scratch?

3. After the upgrade, did you use the drivers provided by Windows 2003 server or did you get new ones from HP's website?

- Andre

[Geni Hawkins]

I did do the compatibility check before the upgrade; it identified some drivers that were not compatible, but oddly enough, none of these were so identified. It also said the HP ports weren't compatible, but I don't use HP ports; I use simple TCP/IP printer ports.

This was an in-place upgrade of the servers, not a clean install of 2003. These are my domain controllers, and I don't have the staff or the equipment to be able to do a clean install of new domains.

I went and got new drivers for 2003 from HP, and deleted the older drivers, but that doesn't alleviate the problem. I also tried the native 2003 drivers in the cases where they exist, and the drivers for these specific printers have the same issue. As I said before, I can use the old NT 4 drivers, or use the drivers for the Laserjet 4, but I hate doing that.

This seems to be a fairly common issue; I've seen a whole bunch of different complaints about this problem all over the Internet, but no solutions that work, not yet.

[Andre Thompson_1]

Hi Geni

It sounds to me like there might be something wrong with the updated drivers. I think you shuld wait until a newer version of these drivers are out.

Another suggestion might be to use the Windows XP drivers. In some cases the Windows 2003 server can accept Windows XP drivers.

- Andre

[Otis Mamed]

Did this problem get resolved? I am running a Windows 2000 Server, spooling printers, and, when I install a 9500hdn to an XP machine, I get the following error... Function address 0x77c43dbd caused a protection fault... It seems as this problem is on only a couple of XP desktop machines, some, the printer installs fine and the printing preferences show up fine. Any update would be helpful. Thanks!

[Andy Haigh_1]

I have had a problem with LJ1320 driver. I install the driver on the W2K3 SP1 server and then install the shared printer on a Win XP PC and get the problem you describe. I found that if I deleted the printer on XP machine and then just re-installed it worked correctly.