Error notification whenever I print with an HP P1102W printer

Every time I print in I get a toast notification that says "The Printer Couldn't Print <target>". However the document prints without any issues.

There is no entry in the Event Log.

I configured my printer to have a static IP address and my computer is using a standard TCP/IP port to connect to the printer.

This seems to be specific to Server 2022 and Windows 11; I do not get this error message in Windows 10.

Any thoughts as to the cause?

Thanks in advance.

Hello,

Run the printer troubleshooter first: Go to Start > Settings > Update and Security > Troubleshoot > Printer > select Run Troubleshooter.

Double-check if your machine doesn't have any pending security patches: Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for Updates.

Reinstall Printer Driver.

It's been a long time since I had to deal with networked printers but, AFAIK, the toast notifications are generated by the Windows print server, not the printer itself.

Try this:
1. Open the 'Run' dialog using Windows key + R keys together.
2. Copy/paste or type printui.exe /s then press the RETURN/ENTER key.
3. When the Print Server Properties dialog appears, select the Advanced tab:
4. Experiment with removing the tick marks against 'local' and 'network' printers to see if you can halt the toast notifications.


It it works then it's only a workaround. You would need something like Process Monitor filtered on the print process to see, if possible, what triggers the 'error' toast notification.

Hope this helps...

RickC said:

It's been a long time since I had to deal with networked printers but, AFAIK, the toast notifications are generated by the Windows print server, not the printer itself.

Try this:
1. Open the 'Run' dialog using Windows key + R keys together.
2. Copy/paste or type printui.exe /s then press the RETURN/ENTER key.
3. When the Print Server Properties dialog appears, select the Advanced tab:
4. Experiment with removing the tick marks against 'local' and 'network' printers to see if you can halt the toast notifications.


It it works then it's only a workaround. You would need something like Process Monitor filtered on the print process to see, if possible, what triggers the 'error' toast notification.

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the info. I did exactly what you recommended by removing the "Show informational notifications" from the print server properties and that stopped the toast notifications.

After doing some more research on print server errors, I found out that messages for that particular service are logged in a different log than the system log. They are located under Applications and Services -> Microsoft -> Windows -> PrintService -> Admin. The error listed there was "1803: The printer command is invalid"

I tried installing the print server role on my Server 2022 install but that didn't help. I read online that it might be a permissions issue, so I tried adding my username to have full control over the spool service and that didn't help.

If you have any further thoughts, please let me know.

mazer rakham said:

If you have any further thoughts, please let me know.

To delve deeper then I suspect you need the granularity of Process Monitor (ProcMon) to determine what is actually triggering the '1803: The printer command is invalid' error.

The problem is that ProcMon has a bit of a steep learning curve. It captures EVERYTHING, thousands of times a minute so there are two skills that need to be learned quickly:

1) Setting up an effective initial filter to cut out most of the irrelevant captures first then, once a capture has been ended;
2) Learning to quickly filter out other irrelevant captured events in order to narrow down your search for the error trigger, for example by looking in the Result column for events like FAILURE or ACCESS DENIED.

Unfortunately (hmm... fortunately, if I'm honest), I have no access to Windows 11 and haven't had a printer for years... so cannot set up a test to even begin to identify what to look for... but I'm going to guess that the first filter will be on the print server process itself.

At its most basic the service accepts print requests from computers, queues the requests and then sends the requests to specific printers. It's a bi-directional client-server process so at some point the print spooler service or your printer may be sending back a print job status message of "nope... can't/won't do that"... which ProcMon should be able to pick up as one or more captured FAILURE or ACCESS DENIED events.

Hope this helps...

Thanks for your suggestion about procmon. I have in fact used that in the past.

I think I've finally figured out the problem. The TLDR is that the error is most likely being caused by missing telemetry/"value added" services that I personally neither need nor want on my computer so I won't be fixing it.

The following is the longer explanation as to how I came to conclusion.

For Windows, the printer driver for the P1102W is not prepackged with the OS, so it needs to be installed. The way I normally do this through the .inf driver file (i.e. adding the printer IP address, and then when prompted for the driver, select "Have Disk" and browse to the .inf file). There are other ways to do this- there is a "full installer" available through HP which is a stand alone exe that installs the driver and some other printer utilities.

I did get the printer to work with no errors with the HP provided exe on a VM, although that too required some mods as well. After doing a side by side analysis using procmon when the printer printed, I saw that the VM that had the full install was kicking off a bunch of other HP exes that it wasn't on my base system (the one where I only used the inf for install). Of particular interest were two- "HP1100SM.exe" and "HPSIsvc.exe". The first one seems to be checking on my toner cartridge and nagging me if I don't have a genuine HP one installed. The second one seems to be some kind of service that is set to automatically start every time I boot my pc and has to do with installing more drivers/software for the printer. The service is from 2010 and I have no need to install anything more for the printer. Also, when I disabled this service, I got the error notification again. So that seems to be the root cause of this all.

It sucks that so many things come with as much bloatware as they do nowadays.

mazer rakham said:

I did get the printer to work with no errors with the HP provided exe on a VM, although that too required some mods as well. After doing a side by side analysis using procmon when the printer printed, I saw that the VM that had the full install was kicking off a bunch of other HP exes that it wasn't on my base system (the one where I only used the inf for install). Of particular interest were two- "HP1100SM.exe" and "HPSIsvc.exe". The first one seems to be checking on my toner cartridge and nagging me if I don't have a genuine HP one installed. The second one seems to be some kind of service that is set to automatically start every time I boot my pc and has to do with installing more drivers/software for the printer. The service is from 2010 and I have no need to install anything more for the printer. Also, when I disabled this service, I got the error notification again. So that seems to be the root cause of this all.

How about using ProcMon and filter just on the "HPSIsvc.exe" process to see exactly what it's doing when triggered? If it's making external requests for additional software then perhaps an outgoing firewall block?

mazer rakham said:

It sucks that so many things come with as much bloatware as they do nowadays.

I couldn't agree with you more.