Event ID 6161 and 6162

[Guest]

I am having a problem with one of our Xerox network printers. None of our
users can print to it. I do not see anything show up in the print queue.

These are the events we are seeing in our Event Viewer.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Print
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6161
Date: 6/22/2005
Time: 8:24:05 AM
User: DIRECTCORP\PaulKeefer
Computer: DATADEVA
Description:
The document Microsoft Office Outlook - Memo Style owned by PaulKeefer
failed to print on printer Xerox Document Centre 332. Data type: NT EMF
1.008. Size of the spool file in bytes: 65536. Number of bytes printed: 0.
Total number of pages in the document: 1. Number of pages printed: 0. Client
machine: \\192.168.0.152. Win32 error code returned by the print processor:
0. The operation completed successfully.


For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Print
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6162
Date: 6/22/2005
Time: 8:17:02 AM
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer: DATADEVA
Description:
The spooler has detected that a component has an unusually large number of
open GDI objects. As a result some EMF print jobs might not print until the
spooler is restarted.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

 

[Guest]

Are you using the latest Xerox drivers compatible with XP?

 

[Guest]

Yes I am.. I fixed the problem anyway. I restarted the print spooler
service and it solved the issue.

 

[Guest]

Simple.......wasn't it?

 

[Alan Morris]

Not that simple as this problem will return. We added the 6162 error in
Server 2003 SP1 to detect when applications improperly generate EMF files
and leak GDI handles as a result.

Log in to the console session and launch task manager. Processes Tab, View
Select Columns..., enable GDI Objects. Find the spoolsv.exe process and
note the number of GDI objects. Monitor this value over several days. The
system defaults to 10000 in any one process. When this limit is reached GDI
can no longer allocate resources to render the print job and generates a
bogus success error 0. When GDI does this, the spooler will now check if
the objects that GDI owns has reached the defined limit and generates event
6162.

 

[Mike Hernandez]

Hello Alan,

Can you tell me how you where able to solve issue? did you increase system
default limits? Thanks for any feedback.

We currently have a win3k cluster print server given us error code 6161 and
6162 which we have to restart spooler service to get print moving again.


Mike Hernandez
Hewlett - Packard print team.

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

I still hang out here.

We solved the issue by working with the application developer to fix the EMF
handle leak within the application.

The application that leaked GDI handles was the MS Office Document Viewer.
There is a downloadable fix.

But any application can produce the problem when improperly handling the EMF
file.

It's pretty easy to track down the application on the client. Basically one
GDI handle is leaked for each page.

For the Document Writer, I created a 500 page mdi file and used a local
printer printing to a "nul" Local Port (I also enabled Keep Printed Jobs).
Open Task Manager and enable GDI handles.

Double click the mdi file and the Viewer opens up. I don't remember the exe
name. Then print the document. You can see in Task Manager the GDI handles
go up 500 in the application and in the spooler process.

Restart the job or print it again and 500 more handle leak. The application
will fail when it hits 10000, this includes the spooler.

Load up the applications you need to test and get a big enough doc to
identify the culprit. Watch the GDI handles as you print.


Let me know what you find, this took a while to track down, but once we
found the application, it was easy to confirm.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[lynn brown]

Hi, I was searching through the postings as we have recently had this issue
appear with one of our servers. I noticed this old posting. I wondered if
there is any setting that needs to be changed so that the spooler does not
have to be restarted several times a week?
thanks

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

when you hit 6162 you have an application that is sending improperly
generated EMF files to the print server which leaks GDI handles in the
process. The GDI handle limit is 10000. When the spooler hits this limit
all calls to GDI for rendering the print jobs will fail (happily you will
notice in 6161 events GDI returns success for these failures).

You need to track down the application. It's easiest to do this on the
client side since the application will leak the same GDI handles when
creating the print job.

On the print server open task manager. One has to do this at the machine or
in a TS console session. Go to processes, change the view to include GDI
handles. Find spoolsv.exe and keep track of the GDI handles. When it
approaches the 10000 limit you will need to restart the spooler.

On the client start loading common applications for your work place.

Task manager will help on the client side as well. Include GDI handles.
Launch the application, find the process in task manager, print a ten page
doc. If the GDI handle count goes up 10, you have the culprit. So the
application you are looking for is one that will corporate wide send 10000
pages (not jobs) in your failure time window.


Don't try to track down the client on the server, from experience, this
takes too long. When you hit the GDI limit, ALL application job types will
fail so you end up following the wrong path.

This one is a hair puller and I know where your coming from. Even though I
just test the print subsystem, I spent too many hours working with our IT
department.

How does your company print faxes?

alanmo
microsoft.com

put it together Lynn, I'll help you out on this one.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[tusr3b1]

Alan, thanks for reply and the explanation.
Our company does not do faxing direct from laptops.
I suspected that the issue is revolving around one of the apps that we use for viewing and printing photos (the app is called ACDSee.) The only reason I suspect this is because it seems that this is the start of the errors - when someone initiates a print job to the color printer, the event id will log to the event viewer, the print job will not print, and there also seems to be a domino/cascade effect to the other printers on that server (i mean that once the 6162 posts to the log, the users are unable to print to the other printers on that server.) Once we restart the spooler, users are happily printing until this happens again. Sometimes this satellite office sees this proiblem 3 or 4 times a week. I guess I will start by looking at the clients at that site, see if it is one particular client that is causing this.
thanks.

 

[mirzam]

Alan, we are seeing alot of 6161 ids on our W2003 sp1 print clusters. The entry in the 6161 message contains

"The document outbind://572-000000.....Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 0. The operation completed successfully."

This looks to be generated from Microsoft Outlook 2003. However, there are other outlook jobs that print without issues (event id: 10) . Is there a fix for Outlook also? Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[ArrieteR]

This is very old but was wondering if anyone knows where to find the downloadable fix stated above. I have search for it everywhere but can seem to find it. Need a little help. Having the same problem here at our site. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.