TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

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Aleron Ives
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Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:41 pm

TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Aleron Ives » Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:49 pm

Hi all,

I've been running tap-windows-9.21.1.exe under Windows 7 x64 (without OpenVPN), and everything seemed fine: I bridged my connections, configured my static IP settings again for the bridge, and both my PC and applications using the TAP were able to achieve network connectivity; however, the Windows Event Viewer is showing that having the TAP driver installed is causing an error.

I'm receiving Event ID 512, which states:

Code: Select all

InitializePrintProvider failed for provider inetpp.dll. This can occur because of system instability or a lack of system resources.
The source is listed as "PrintService", and the the task category is "Initializing a print provider". Every time I reboot my machine, a new error appears in the log. I'm quite certain that the TAP driver is causing this, as a) the first instance in the log appears two days after I installed the TAP driver, and b) I just uninstalled the TAP driver, and now I'm not getting new errors when I reboot.

The error doesn't seem to actually do anything, as spoolsv.exe is still running, and I can print a test page to my networked printer. Even so, I think it's generally better to try to resolve errors when possible.

Has anyone else encountered this, and is there a way to fix it? I'm tempted to try the older 9.9.2_3 TAP version, but I'm not sure that's a good idea under Windows 7 x64. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Traffic
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Re: TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Traffic » Fri Apr 10, 2015 4:14 pm

It would be more helpful if you tried all the different TAP driver versions and let us know if any resolve the problem.

You are aware that there is an NDIS-5 and NDIS-6 version of the TAP driver ?

Aleron Ives
OpenVpn Newbie
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Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:41 pm

Re: TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Aleron Ives » Fri Apr 10, 2015 6:53 pm

Yes, but I wasn't sure if using tap-windows-9.9.2_3.exe on Windows 7 x64 was a good idea, since the download page says:
Download Page wrote:The tap-windows driver comes in two flavours: the NDIS 5 driver for Windows XP and NDIS 6 for Windows and above.
and not all XP drivers work correctly on 7. Also, I'm guessing there was supposed to be a version specified for "NDIS 6 for Windows ___ and above" and that it was higher than XP. If the old driver works on 7, then I'll try that one, too. I didn't want to try other solutions prematurely in case this problem was already documented.

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Traffic
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Re: TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Traffic » Sat Apr 11, 2015 4:12 pm

Aleron Ives wrote:I wasn't sure if using tap-windows-9.9.2_3.exe on Windows 7 x64 was a good idea
From the download page:
Installer (64-bit), Windows XP and later
openvpn-install-2.3.6-I003-x86_64.exe
NDIS-5 for 64bit windows ..
Aleron Ives wrote:If the old driver works on 7, then I'll try that one, too
It will work but may not fix the problem ..

All Windows TAP driver versions (and more):
https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/w ... wsreleases

Aleron Ives
OpenVpn Newbie
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:41 pm

Re: TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Aleron Ives » Wed Apr 22, 2015 6:02 am

I tried the older 9.9.2_3 driver, and I got the same printer error upon restarting my computer as I got with the NDIS-6 installer. It seems that Avast Antivirus may not like the TAP driver, as I noticed avBugReport.exe running when I started the machine. I deleted the network bridge and tried to use the supplied batch file to uninstall the TAP, but I couldn't open any command prompts, and with the network bridge gone, I had no network connectivity. I tried recreating the bridge (which restored network connectivity) and waited five minutes or so for the Avast bug reporting to finish (and for sppsvc.exe to go to sleep), but the PC froze. I could move the mouse cursor but do nothing else, so I had to power off.

I started Windows normally again (which generated another printer error in the log), and this time avBugReport.exe wasn't running, so I quickly deleted the network bridge again, ran the TAP removal batch file, and then ran the tap-windows uninstaller to remove tap-windows completely. After reconfiguring my Ethernet adapter, running chkdsk on my drives, and rebooting again, the printer error is again no longer appearing in the event log, and I'm (hopefully) back to where I was before I installed 9.9.2_3.

I also noticed that when I installed both the NDIS-5 driver today and when I installed the NDIS-6 driver a little over a month ago that the event log shows "Event ID 4107 Source: CAPI2" errors about 27 times when I ran the installer:

Code: Select all

Failed extract of third-party root list from auto update cab at: <http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab> with error: A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the timestamp in the signed file.
.
I'm not sure if that's related, as I have other instances of the error in the log, but the last one was from about a year ago and is thus unrelated to OpenVPN, and I didn't receive further instances of the error after the driver installation was complete. I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do now, so any help would be appreciated.

Jameswalter
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Re: TAP causes printer error on Windows 7 x64?

Post by Jameswalter » Tue Sep 27, 2022 5:12 am

Microsoft says you should disable the print spooler privacy settings on both the Client and Print Server. When the RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled Registry key is set to 1, Windows automatically encrypts RPC communication with network printers and print servers.

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