Programs Going "Not Responding" When Trying to Print

I am having problems with my Laptop running Windows 10 Pro build 19043.1288, current with updates.

Let me preface this all with the fact that my setup was working great for 6 months until a week ago.

The printer I have installed on my Laptop is an HP M203dw that is being served by a desktop.

Anytime I try to print the program stops working and the title bar starts saying (Not Responding).

If I go and restart the Print Spooler service, it makes the program respond but the print errors out.

I have removed the printer and think pretty sure I uninstalled the drivers. Then I reinstalled the printer and I have the same problem.

If I remote desktop into the Desktop serving the printer, I can print just fine and that is how I have been printing over the last week.

Is there a recent Windows update that could have caused this? What else could I do to troubleshoot this?

Hazardsneon, Hello and welcome to tenforums ,

Yes, this is caused by recent Windows 10 Updates which break printer sharing via a printer server.

Possible printer issue with KB5005565 this is the thread you want to look at. You may wish to start from the end and read backwards as it's rather long. There is no fix, but some workarounds mentioned.

The title only contains the September CU, but the October CU also caused further problems as discussed in the thread.

If the printer has a network interface, it would be better to use that and let each PC print directly to the printer and eliminate the printer server dependency/problem.

New Windows 10 KB5006670 update breaks network printing related article

Ahh! I thought that might be the case.

I would hook it up to the network directly but when I first got the printer the Wi-fi and Ethernet of the printer was super flaky and it would drop connection constantly. Connecting it USB to a desktop and serving it was really reliable up until now.

I will look up those posts and see about the work-arounds.

Thank you for quick responses!

Check to see if the printer has any pending firmware updates - they may have fixed the networking issues.

It looks like the latest FW for this printer is from slightly over a year ago. Hopefully they are working on one.

I tried the registry edit to enable the CopyFiles files feature but haven't had rebooted to see if it works for my HP printer.

That's correct - uninstalling the October CU was one workaround for October. September CU had some registry tweaks or uninstall the CU. Microsoft really created a nightmare here for those using Printer Servers.