Before I get to the main content of this post, I wanted to first introduce myself as this is my first post here on the Bits and Dots web log.  My name is Brent Follett, and I work here at HP as a consultant in the printing and imaging space.  Brian invited me to share in the success he's built with his extremely informative articles.  He and I have worked together for years, and I thank him for the invitation.  I hope to help carry on the high standard he has set here.

Now enough with that, lets move onto the real topic of this post.

Microsoft spends a great deal of time and energy improving their products, whether those improvements come from adding new features or correcting discovered issues.  These changes often come in the form of hotfixes, and most administrators who work with Microsoft products are familiar with them.  For some reason, though, hotfixes don't tend to be top of mind when it comes to keeping a printing environment current -- drivers generally are.  And while drivers are important, the underlying print subsystem is equally as important.

For that reason, I've put together a list of various hotfixes I know of that can impact the underlying print subsystem.  By no means is this list exhausive, and it doesn't cover every possible operating system and service pack level.  However, I hope it is a good start.

• Article 901377 - The printer display panel does not display the complete document name if the document name is a Mulit-Byte Character Set string
• Article 905519 - You experience problems when you try to print to a file programatically in Windows XP
• Article 906752 - You canot install a printer that uses a custom print processor in Windows Server 2003 or in Windows XP Professional
• Article 929134 - A print queue's Properties dialog box may take 40 to 60 seconds to open in Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and in Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1
• Article 931318 - You receive an error message when you try to open the Properties dialog box for a shared printer on a Windows Server 2003-based computer
• Article 937193 - The complete name of a network printer cannot be displayed on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP
• Article 939884 - a GDI handle leak occurs in Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003 when an application frequently calls the CreateRectRgn function
• Article 946198 - The print queue status is displayed as "Offline" ona Windows Server 2003-based print server if SNMP is enabled and if the printer devices do not respond to SNMP commands
• Article 948046 - A Word document is not printed as expecetd after you install the Windows European Union Expansion Font pack in Windows Server 2003 or in Windows XP
• Article 948349 - The print process does not work correclty, and you may receive an error mesasge when you print multiple copies of a multipage document in Windows Visat or in Windows Server 2008 (a quick personal note: I have found these errors can also occur in Windows XP, and it can be fixed by applying hotfix 948046 that I've listed above, even though the hotfix specifically talks about the European Union Expansion Font pack)
• Article 952206 - A printer-driver upgrade option fails on printer clients that are running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP when multiple printer queues are upgraded at the same time
• Article 953546 - The Print Spooler process (Spoolsv.exe) crashes while it is copying print driver files on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP

If you have additional suggestions on keeping a printing environment current, please use the comments feature below and let us know of them.