2021: the year Windows and printers stopped speaking
June 2021 updates broke network printing with error 0x0000011b, twice
The market's verdict: +2.4% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
The June 2021 cumulative updates changed Point and Print behavior so that connecting to shared network printers failed with error 0x0000011b across offices and homes, fixed with out of band updates by July. Then September's Patch Tuesday re broke it with new RPC hardening, and a second wave of the same error hit print servers nationwide. Two nationwide printer outages in one summer from the same product family, connected by a registry key everybody memorized. Microsoft eventually documented the workaround itself, which is the support equivalent of leaving a spare key under the mat.
This one is well documented.
Were you affected? Unbreak it
The workaround Microsoft eventually documented itself
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print" /v RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f (Run in an admin Command Prompt on the print server, then restart the Print Spooler service. This relaxes the RPC hardening that broke shared printing; remove it once fully patched.)
Links
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Impact
- Windows Central (publication)
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Context
- BleepingComputer (publication)
↳ caused by KB5004237 (and June 2021 print family)
Timeline
- Jun 8, 2021 Fixed Microsoft shipped a fix.