I'm printing a directory of about 500 multi-page tifs to a high speed
printer and the spooler process is killing me!!!

here is a little code.....



Public Function PrintImage(ByVal SourceFile As String) As Boolean

        Try
            ImageToPrint = FromFile(SourceFile)

            PageNumber = 0
            ImagePages = ImageToPrint.GetFrameCount(FrameDimension.Page())
        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog(ex.ToString, "Print Class",
EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try

        Try

            PDocument.DocumentName = SourceFile
            PDocument.Print()

        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog(ex.ToString, "Print Class",
EventLogEntryType.Error)
            Return False
        End Try

        Return True

    End Function

Then the event on the global variable PDocument is being raised for the
pages....

Private Sub PagePrintFunction(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PDocument.PrintPage
        Try
            ImageToPrint.SelectActiveFrame(FrameDimension.Page, PageNumber)

            PageNumber = PageNumber + 1

            e.Graphics.DrawImage(ImageToPrint, 0, 0,
(e.PageSettings.PaperSize.Width - 40), (e.PageSettings.PaperSize.Height -
50))

            If PageNumber < ImagePages Then
                e.HasMorePages = True
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog(ex.ToString, "Print Class",
EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try
    End Sub

This is not only really slow with larger images but as stated in the title,
my print spooler process turns into a 2 Gig memory monster after only about
160 images!!!!!!!!!   Does anyone have a better solution or can tweak the
code?   I'm kinda at my wits end over this.  I've tried creating and
disposing of the PDocument variable in my loop that prints each file and
still the process grows.

MANY Thanks
Scott

Scott M wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteJust a quick thought....  I believe your problem is because the spooler
isn't purged until the last page is printed.  Have you tried dividing
the overall print task into smaller numbers of pages, and then calling
the print function several times?  You'd have to handle the Start-Page
for each call in this case, but it might work.... Then again, you might
just end up with several smaller spooler tasks that add-up to be 2 gig,
but I would at least expect each spooler process to be deleted once all
the pages in each process had been printed.

Anyone else tried this?

ShaneO

There are 10 kinds of people - Those who understand Binary and those who
don't.

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your post!

Does your tif file have 500 frames or do you have 500 files in a directory
for printing?

ShaneO's reply seems make sense, you may give it try and feedback the
result here.

Regarding this issue, I recommend you try to use some existing softwares
that can read these tif files for printing, can this problem be reproduced?
I suspect it may be a bug of spooler process since your code snippet is
really simple.

Anyway, I will wait for your feedback. Thanks.

Best regards,
Jeffrey Tan
Microsoft Online Community Support
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The Printimage function gets called 500 times for tiffs that have about 10 -
30 pages in each.  I haven't installed the service on any other machines to
see if it will konk out the server there, either.

I really stinks to have to restart the spooler and to restart the machine
after only printing 100 tiffs.

And as far as other software, Jeff.   What do you suggest?  This is a server
side process for a production orientated environment so I can't have much
downtime.

Thanks
Scott


""Jeffrey Tan[MSFT]"" <je***@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
Show quoteHide quote

Scott M wrote:
Could you monitor the size of the spooler directory and wait for it to go
down a bit before adding more print jobs to it?

Andrew

It doesn't go down.  even after the service that spools the images is
restarted.

Show quoteHide quote

Hi Scott,

Based on my experience, any type of image viewer software will have print
function build-in. You may choose one supports tif file, and try to print
the tif files one by one. I am not sure if mspaint.exe supports tif image,
can you give it a try?

Looking at the issue's nature, it is hard for us to give it a reproduce on
my side. It would require intensive troubleshooting which would be done
quickly and effectively with direct assistance from a Microsoft Support
Professional through Microsoft Product Support Services. They may perform
some remote debugging to your machine to identify the root cause.

You can contact Microsoft Product Support directly to discuss additional
support options you may have available, by contacting us at 1-(800)936-5800
or by choosing one of the options listed at
http://www.microsoft.com/services/microsoftservices/srv_support.mspx

Finally, if you want to troubleshoot the spooler process memory issue, it
is helpful to use UMDH.EXE from windbg to. The tool can be used to obtain
call stack information of various memory block allocation of a process.
Please refer to below for more information:
"Umdhtools.exe: How to Use Umdh.exe to Find Memory Leaks"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/268343/

Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards,
Jeffrey Tan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
Get notification to my posts through email? Please refer to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/managednewsgroups/default.aspx#notif
ications.

Note: The MSDN Managed Newsgroup support offering is for non-urgent issues
where an initial response from the community or a Microsoft Support
Engineer within 1 business day is acceptable. Please note that each follow
up response may take approximately 2 business days as the support
professional working with you may need further investigation to reach the
most efficient resolution. The offering is not appropriate for situations
that require urgent, real-time or phone-based interactions or complex
project analysis and dump analysis issues. Issues of this nature are best
handled working with a dedicated Microsoft Support Engineer by contacting
Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/support/default.aspx.
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Show quote Hide quote Scott M wrote:
What, not even after the images have been printed? I'm suggesting that
rather than try to sent umpteen gigabytes all in one go, you give the
printer (and print spooler) a chance to catch up/breathe. And avoid filling
up the disk the spool folder resides on.

The print spooler service should not delete the files in the spool folder
just because it's been restarted.

The spool folder location is in the registry at
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\DefaultSpoolDirectory
(and other locations; I can't remember which one to set to change it).

Andrew

This actually sounds like a bug in the Printimage function.  Does this
function close each print job properly.  By this I mean are the spool files
closed once they have been created.  I have seen image processing programs
not properly close the images when they are done with them.

Mike Ober.


Show quoteHide quote

I'm not too sure what you mean.   I've changed the code considerably since
I've last posted it (trying to figure out what is happening).  Installed new
print drivers and messed with settings on the printer with our own hardware
support (Direct printing instead of spooling the print jobs)

It's just a huge enigma to me.  Even after the application hasn't been
printing for over two hours now the spoolersv.exe process stands at
1,140,324 K in task manager. the users printed about 700 single page tiff
files today.  Here is the code that printed the images.

Private Sub PagePrintFunction(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
PrintPageEventArgs)
        Static Dim PageNumber As Integer = 0

        Try
            ImageToPrint.SelectActiveFrame(FrameDimension.Page, PageNumber)

            PageNumber += 1

            e.Graphics.DrawImage(ImageToPrint, New RectangleF(0, 0,
(e.PageSettings.PaperSize.Width - 40), (e.PageSettings.PaperSize.Height -
50)))

            If PageNumber < ImagePages Then
                e.HasMorePages = True
            Else
                e.HasMorePages = False
                e.Graphics.Dispose()
                PageNumber = 0
            End If

        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog("PagePrintFunction" & vbCrLf &
ex.ToString, "Print Class", EventLogEntryType.Error)
            Throw ex
        End Try
    End Sub

    Public Function PrintImage(ByVal SourceFile As String) As Boolean

        Try
            ImageToPrint = FromFile(SourceFile)

            ImagePages = ImageToPrint.GetFrameCount(FrameDimension.Page())
        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog("Getting Image Frames: " & vbCrLf &
ex.ToString, "Print Class", EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try

        Try
            Using PDocument As New PrintDocument

                PDocument.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = PrinterName
                PDocument.DocumentName = SourceFile

                AddHandler PDocument.PrintPage, AddressOf PagePrintFunction

                PDocument.Print()
            End Using

        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog("Print Document: " & vbCrLf &
ex.ToString, "Print Class", EventLogEntryType.Error)
            Return False
        End Try

        Return True

    End Function

Public Sub PrintFolderContents()

        Dim ExtensionFilter As String = "*." & Filter
        Dim FileNameList As String() = Directory.GetFiles(Folder,
ExtensionFilter)

        Try
            General.WriteToEventLog("Starting to print " & Folder, "Print
Class", EventLogEntryType.Information)

            FileNameList = Directory.GetFiles(Folder, ExtensionFilter)

            Array.Sort(FileNameList)

            If _ToggleArchiveBit Then
                turnOffSwapFileBits(FileNameList)
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog(ex.ToString, "Print Class",
EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try

        Try

            For i As Integer = 0 To FileNameList.Length - 1
                If PrintImage(FileNameList(i)) Then
                    If _ToggleArchiveBit Then
                        turnOnAttributeBit(FileNameList(i))
                    End If
                Else
                    General.WriteToEventLog("File " & FileNameList(i) & "
did not properly Print.", "Print Class", EventLogEntryType.Warning)
                End If

            Next

        Catch ex As Exception
            General.WriteToEventLog(ex.ToString, "Print Class",
EventLogEntryType.Error)
        Finally
            If Not ImageToPrint Is Nothing Then
                ImageToPrint.Dispose()
            End If
        End Try

    End Sub

The speed at which the jobs are pushed into the printer is less then optimal
as well.


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