Printers Pane - Green Bar

[TomPearceGeek]

Dear Fellow Geeks,

 

I’ve been trying to isolate an issue for a good few months on and off. Currently, all users are experiencing this issue and it’s becoming a bit of a pain.

 

All users, when trying to load the “Devices and Printers” pane, experience a never ending green progress bar in the path box. If you leave it long enough, it completes but shows nothing in the window. We are able to temporarily rectify this by clearing out the profile, but the problem soon returns.

Lots of forum posts say it could be something to do with the Bluetooth service yada yada. Giving it the benefit of the doubt we tried it. It didn’t help (even know we guessed it wouldn’t anyway). We have checked through our policies to try and isolate if there’s anything in there that might be causing the issue but, again nothing that jumps out to us.

 

Any sort of suggestions or thoughts would be well received!

 

Tom

[robyholmes]

If you stop the print spooler service does the page load fine? Would show if the problem with with devices or printers.

[TomPearceGeek]

If you stop the print spooler service does the page load fine? Would show if the problem with with devices or printers.

 

Makes no difference unfortunatley. It's weird, everyone can still see and map printers from applications like Office, Acrobat etc but as soon as we open the devices and printers pane, it just sits there loading.

[mrwoberts]

Try disabling Bluetooth (BIOS/Device Manager) - that was the cause for me a while back.

 

Edit: Doh! I've done it again - just read the title and skimmed the OP. Apologies, I see you've already tried that.

Edited September 16, 2016 by mrwoberts

[TomPearceGeek]

Il let it slide this time mrwoberts

 

The only things that appear within the window on a fresh profile are normally the standard Keyboard, Mouse and Screens and any printers mounted via group policy (user policy with computer loopback).

 

The only other thing that we do, is remove default printers using computer policies such as One Note, XPS ect at log off, and we currently clear all network printers on logoff too, whilst we remove legacy print names from user accounts (we changed our print fleet over the summer). We were however encountering these issues long before we implemented this group policies and have double checked by disabling the policies and clearing profiles, to no avail.

 

 

Some more screenshots for perusal.

Edited September 19, 2016 by TomPearceGeek
Made a Typo :3

[LeMarchand]

Does it make any difference if you remove the printers via GPP instead of script? I remove all shared printers first (to get rid of any rogues), then add them back in.

[TomPearceGeek]

Not that we can tell, as we disabled the scripts, cleared the profile and as far as I am aware, it still broke. How are you removing them using GPP? We have quite a variation of names and I don't really want to setup a remove rule for every printer on site, if I can help it.

[LeMarchand]

How are you removing them using GPP? We have quite a variation of names and I don't really want to setup a remove rule for every printer on site, if I can help it.

 

Just set up "Delete all shared printer connections" as Action 1.

 

 

...though it's clutching at straws! (But IMHO more efficient than an extra script).

 

Whenever I've had "green bar" problems it's been on old machines that are struggling due to having old processors/lack of RAM/trashed hard disks so probably not what you're having.

 

P.S. Did have something similar last week on one machine that I put down to a borked printer driver installation (home printer). If you're desperate you could try uninstalling all printer drivers on an affected machine and trying again.

[TomPearceGeek]

I will give this a go. Thank you for the suggestion. Still happy to hear other's opinions.

[ITJS2015]

Try and disable your Bluetooth support services on a local machine and see if that make any difference. I had it a while back and it solved my issue with it being so slow :0

[TomPearceGeek]

Try disabling Bluetooth (BIOS/Device Manager) - that was the cause for me a while back.

 

Edit: Doh! I've done it again - just read the title and skimmed the OP. Apologies, I see you've already tried that.

 

Lots of forum posts say it could be something to do with the Bluetooth service yada yada.

 

Try and disable your Bluetooth support services on a local machine and see if that make any difference. I had it a while back and it solved my issue with it being so slow :0

 

 

Hums Awkwardly :3

[mrwoberts]

How are you getting on Tom? Are you any closer?

[TomPearceGeek]

Right, so.

 

Using Brand New User – In an OU With blocked Inheritance & Standard Computer Policies. Still an Issue

Using Brand New User – In a Non Blocked OU & Blocked Computer OU. Still an Issue

Using Brand New User – In a Blocked User OU, and a blocked PC OU. Still an issue.

 

Local User / Account without a profile… Not an issue.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Just set up "Delete all shared printer connections" as Action 1.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]38710[/ATTACH]

 

...though it's clutching at straws! (But IMHO more efficient than an extra script).

 

Whenever I've had "green bar" problems it's been on old machines that are struggling due to having old processors/lack of RAM/trashed hard disks so probably not what you're having.

 

P.S. Did have something similar last week on one machine that I put down to a borked printer driver installation (home printer). If you're desperate you could try uninstalling all printer drivers on an affected machine and trying again.

 

This has now replaced our script, so Thank you for that. However, as above doesn't seem to have solved the situation.

[TomPearceGeek]

issue with network discovery settings? the service been turned off?

 

Thanks for the suggestion, however it's all on. As mentioned slightly further up. It's okay, until the user logs off which makes me, and others feel like it could be some sort of policy or corruption with the roaming profile.

[mrwoberts]

Could this be an opportunity to break out ProcMon (sysinternals)

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx

 

You'll be looking what the PC is upto when it is green-barring, for want of a better term

 

Incidentally, on an affected PC, does it complain/error about anything when you open the Task Scheduler - I've seen that in the past too, but not directly related to printers; symptomatic of a corruption of one of tasks that collected system info.

[SHimmer45]

Thanks for the suggestion, however it's all on. As mentioned slightly further up. It's okay, until the user logs off which makes me, and others feel like it could be some sort of policy or corruption with the roaming profile.

 

i reread the thread and then deleted the post

[TomPearceGeek]

i reread the thread and then deleted the post

 

Aha, no worries Thanks for getting involved anyway

[TomPearceGeek]

Could this be an opportunity to break out ProcMon (sysinternals)

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx

 

You'll be looking what the PC is upto when it is green-barring, for want of a better term

 

Incidentally, on an affected PC, does it complain/error about anything when you open the Task Scheduler - I've seen that in the past too, but not directly related to printers; symptomatic of a corruption of one of tasks that collected system info.

 

Seems a good plan, at least we can see what its "Trying" to do. I'll keep you all informed!