Just noticed my blog of about 2 years ago where I described my world without Windows.
Two years on and I have not regretted making the change.
In fact I get increasingly annoyed whenever I have to touch a Windows system, which I do because I have clients with them.
I upgraded my hardware last summer to get 4 monitors onto my system and I moved my old Phenom machine across and have installed Win 7 for those few occasions when I need to access Windows. It's like wading through treacle in comparison to my Ubuntu machine.
This morning for example when I wanted to pop on to Windows to check something it decided to do some updates. 20 minutes and some 6 automatic reboots I was able to get to what I wanted. What a drain on productivity!
If all you do is browse the internet, send and receive a few emails, maybe write a letter or two then go on, be brave, make the leap into the world of Ubuntu Linux.
Friday 12 April 2013
Windows Error 0x00000709 - a fix
Have you been suffering with Error 0x00000709 when trying to change the default printer on your Windows computer.
Here is a potential fix.
Environment:
Two workstations as part of the Windows Server 2008 domain, both running Windows 7 64 bit.
The default printer for these computers have broken irreversibly and had been removed from the system. A new printer had been introduced into the system and the drivers had been installed (not professionally done, the printer had been set up as a shared printer not as a standard network printer - I don't think this is necessarily relevant). When the user tried to set the printer as default it produced this error.
My solution was to uninstall the new printer and reinstall as it should be. To do this I logged on as domain administrator to have access to all the areas I needed.
On the first workstation I deleted the new printer. Then in "Devices and Printers" I clicked to remove the old printer which it seemed to do, however when I went back in to the 'Devices and Printers' page the old printer was still there. I eventually found there was a print job in the print queue for the old printer. I deleted the print job and was able to remove the printer. I then reinstalled the new printer and it appeared as the default printer. I logged on as a normal user and was able to set the default to the new printer without any problem.
The second workstation was not as kind. I went through the same process and when I installed the new printer as administrator it was set as default. Great! When I logged on as a normal user I could not set the default, in fact I could not set the default to any existing printer. Not so Great! I trawled the net and found several solutions some of which suggested manipulating registry keys - not for the faint hearted. What I noticed is that for this user is that there was no registry entries for the new printer where you would expect to find them.
There is a side problem here. When you are a domain user, you can run regedit and under HKCU you can see the keys relevant to yourself but you cannot alter them as you do not have permissions. However if you find regedit on disk and 'run as administrator' then under HKCU the keys you get are those for the administrator not the logged on user, so to manipulate the keys for other users you need to go to HK Users and find the relevant user from those listed.
Now, despite resetting these keys I could still not get the default printer to switch. Why I didn't think of it earlier (see workstation 1) I looked in the print queue and there were some stalled jobs there. On this workstation I could not cancel the jobs directly nor could I 'remove' the printer, this had to use the manufacturers uninstall utility to remove the printer. Once this was done the reinstall of the new printer and the setting of the default printer worked as required
So the moral of this story is this. If you are experiencing 0x00000709 errors then check that you do not have a previously installed printer with stalled jobs in the queue.
If this blog helps one or two people then I will be pleased. If it is read by a Windows engineer who can resolve the problem for Windows internally then I shall be ecstatic. I won't hold my breath for the latter.
Good luck everyone.
ps a further clue here is the behaviour of the printers under different users. On workstation 2 where the administrator had not been using the old printer the default printer was set without any problem. As a standard user where there was a stalled print queue there was a problem. Each user had their own print queue which determines how the default printer can be set. Home users where there is only one user may not see this behaviour.
Here is a potential fix.
Environment:
Two workstations as part of the Windows Server 2008 domain, both running Windows 7 64 bit.
The default printer for these computers have broken irreversibly and had been removed from the system. A new printer had been introduced into the system and the drivers had been installed (not professionally done, the printer had been set up as a shared printer not as a standard network printer - I don't think this is necessarily relevant). When the user tried to set the printer as default it produced this error.
My solution was to uninstall the new printer and reinstall as it should be. To do this I logged on as domain administrator to have access to all the areas I needed.
On the first workstation I deleted the new printer. Then in "Devices and Printers" I clicked to remove the old printer which it seemed to do, however when I went back in to the 'Devices and Printers' page the old printer was still there. I eventually found there was a print job in the print queue for the old printer. I deleted the print job and was able to remove the printer. I then reinstalled the new printer and it appeared as the default printer. I logged on as a normal user and was able to set the default to the new printer without any problem.
The second workstation was not as kind. I went through the same process and when I installed the new printer as administrator it was set as default. Great! When I logged on as a normal user I could not set the default, in fact I could not set the default to any existing printer. Not so Great! I trawled the net and found several solutions some of which suggested manipulating registry keys - not for the faint hearted. What I noticed is that for this user is that there was no registry entries for the new printer where you would expect to find them.
There is a side problem here. When you are a domain user, you can run regedit and under HKCU you can see the keys relevant to yourself but you cannot alter them as you do not have permissions. However if you find regedit on disk and 'run as administrator' then under HKCU the keys you get are those for the administrator not the logged on user, so to manipulate the keys for other users you need to go to HK Users and find the relevant user from those listed.
Now, despite resetting these keys I could still not get the default printer to switch. Why I didn't think of it earlier (see workstation 1) I looked in the print queue and there were some stalled jobs there. On this workstation I could not cancel the jobs directly nor could I 'remove' the printer, this had to use the manufacturers uninstall utility to remove the printer. Once this was done the reinstall of the new printer and the setting of the default printer worked as required
So the moral of this story is this. If you are experiencing 0x00000709 errors then check that you do not have a previously installed printer with stalled jobs in the queue.
If this blog helps one or two people then I will be pleased. If it is read by a Windows engineer who can resolve the problem for Windows internally then I shall be ecstatic. I won't hold my breath for the latter.
Good luck everyone.
ps a further clue here is the behaviour of the printers under different users. On workstation 2 where the administrator had not been using the old printer the default printer was set without any problem. As a standard user where there was a stalled print queue there was a problem. Each user had their own print queue which determines how the default printer can be set. Home users where there is only one user may not see this behaviour.
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