PCL6 Driver Issues since last windows updates "Print Processor Does Not Exist"

[Hellingher]

Hi,

I Forced Print Processor to appear again

1. Download PCL6 from Xerox

2. Add new printer in control panel from de Devices & Printers

3. Choose Manual setup and local port named NULL (to delete later)

4. Manually add drivers from the "PCL6 new downloaded"'s folder

A new printer appear and is useless. 

But de print processor is repaired.

Delete the useless printer.

For me, the result was immediate : Network printers appear by just refreshing (F5) but prefer a clean restart.

[eyitayo]

Thanks for this solution. It helped me with this issue.  I use WFBS in my organization. The solution above made it possible to reinstall the printer driver. But after system reboot, the Xerox printer disappeared again. I have Xerox Versalink 7025. That kept on happening on all the machines (both domain joined and no domain joined).

Eventually I added more stops which made the printer not to disappear again.

After reinstallation, don't restart the machine

1. Open the Trend AV,

2. Go to settings,

3. Change real time scan to behavioral monitoring,

4. Browse C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe,

5. Click add, action = allow,

6. Click OK.

7. Click Start on the desktop, Type services.exe, 

8. Right click and run as Admin

9. Scroll down to locate Windows installer service

10. Change from manual to automatic 

11. Start the service

12. Click apply and OK.

That has kept the printer driver stable on all my systems.

[mspguy]

I've edited my above comment. Trend is definitely the culprit in our case, but the symptoms didn't start until patch KB4457144 and KB4457918 were installed.

[mspguy]

Edit: There is definitely an impact for Trend with this. If Trend is enabled while the install is attempted it will fail and create incremented folders in the print processors folder in system 32. If disabling trend and making the exceptions doesn't work, follow the below steps.

I performed the following steps:

1. Disable Trend or make exceptions
2. Uninstall problem driver and delete package from "print server properties" in control panel on the problem workstation.
3. Stop print spooler
4. Delete print processor key "XeroxV5MSPrint"  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Print Processors\XeroxV5MSPrint
5. Delete problem driver key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3\"yourdrivername"
6. Delete print processor file named "Xrpp_b.dll" and "Xrprt_b.dll" from "C:\Windows\System32\spool\prtprocs\x64"
7. Delete any incremented folders in the x64 folder. They will be named "1", "2", "3", etc. Each install will leave 1+ folders behind. The only thing in the incremented folders should be one of the above print processor files.
8. Enable print spooler
9. Install driver

[Joe Arseneau]

And also note this:

 Unable to Install Print Driver - Error: Print Processor Does Not Exist. This morning we quickly identified this as a Trend Micro antivirus/protection suite problem. If you receive this call, please advise your customer that within the past two weeks Trend Micro updated their .dat files of which perform a more aggressive scan/watch on the Windows Spool directory. The protection suite then removes the Xerox PCL print processor .dll file from the spool directory which results in the stop error: Print Processor does not exist, which results in users not being able to install or re-install our PCL drivers.

To correct this problem the customer must add an exception within Trend Micro protection suite to omit scanning and watching of the Windows spool directory, or contact Trend Micro for other possible solutions to the problem.

Should the customer push back on this explanation, have them temporarily disable their Trend Micro protection suite (all components and agents), then re-install the PCL driver and printer to demonstrate root cause to the issue.

[Joe Arseneau]

If you take Xerox out of the search you find a plethora of information.

And if you add +solved you will find the 2 most common methods to fix it, which are:

Stop the print spooler and copy from a working PC the following files overtop of your problem PC’s files: C:\Windows\System32\spool\prtprocs\x64  WINPRINT.DLL is almost certainly the one causing the issue

Reboot

And the 2nd method is

Open the registry editor (Start > Run > type regedit.exe and press Enter)

• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Print Processors\winprint in registry editor.
• Check for existence of Driver key. If it does not exist, add new string value named Driver and set it equal to winprint.dll.
• Restart the Print Spooler service

Which one you choose depends on the cause of the issue, in this case you already know it was MS breaking things in an update again, nothing in this issue relates in any way to Xerox, the issue affects all brands (as can be seen in the Google searches), In most cases this week it has been the "replace the files" method, but in some cases it was actually both that were needed.

[mspguy]

Since the September updates released for Windows 7, KB4457918 and KB4457144, Windows 7 PC's in domains with a Windows Server 2008R2 print server have been getting errors when attempting to connect to Xerox printers that are installed with their respective PCL6 driver.

I have seen this in multiple environments, with multiple xerox printer models. Among them: Xerox Color C70, Xerox WorkCentre 3615, Xerox Phaser 5500DT, Xerox WorkCentre 7970. All were previously using the PCL6 driver which uses the "XeroxV5Print" print processor. When switched to the PS driver they all work fine. PS driver uses the "winprint" print processor.

This has happened in multiple different environments. The only similarities are Windows 7 workstations and 2008R2 print servers, as well as this months updates being applied.

I confirmed that if I install the PS drivers prior to updating the workstations that the printers still work. It's strange and appears to be limited to the PCL drivers.

Is there any information about this out there? Googling hasn't led to much in terms of results besides one or two posts on the sysadmin subreddit, where they resolved it using the PS drivers as well.