Many people have been reporting issues with printing recently. Getting the dreaded blue screen of death with the error: “APC_INDEX_MISMATCH for win32kfull.sys”? On March 9th, Microsoft released a Windows Update patch which has caused users various issues from odd printing issues, blue screens, black boxes in windows, or odd issues with barcodes. According to Microsoft, these updates only cause issues with a subset of Type 3 printer drivers for Kyocera, Ricoh, Zebra, and Dymo printers, and does not affect printer drivers that are Type 4.
The offending updates are:
Windows 10 Ver.20H2/2004: KB5000802
Windows 10 Ver.1909/1903: KB5000808
Windows 10 Ver.1803: KB5000809
Windows 10 Ver.1809: KB5000822
Microsoft has since released a set of patches to fix these issues.
Windows 10 Ver.20H2/2004: KB5001567
Windows 10 Ver.1909/1903: KB5001566
Windows 10 Ver.1803: KB5001565
Windows 10 Ver.1809: KB5001568
and
Windows 10 Ver.20H2/2004: KB5001649
Windows 10 Ver.1909/1903: KB5001648
Windows 10 Ver.1803: KB5001634
Windows 10 Ver.1809: KB5001638
These patches can be obtained from Windows Update or directly from the Microsoft Update Catalog.
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx
There are other workarounds to the issue such as uninstalling the offending update or enabling direct printing, but these should not be necessary since Microsoft has finally released a patch fix.
How to enable direct printing:
To print from 32-bit application on 64-bit Windows versions without crashing, Microsoft recommends enabling Direct Printing for your printer using the following procedure:
- Open an elevated command prompt and run the following command to find if the feature is already toggled on (replace PRINTERNAME with the name of your printer):
- rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /Xg /n PRINTERNAME
- If Direct Printing is not enabled, run the following command from the same elevated command prompt (replace PRINTERNAME with the name of your printer):
- rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /Xs /n PRINTERNAME attributes +direct
To print from 64-bit applications on 64-bit OS or using 32-bit apps on 32-bit OS, you have to download and install the Application Compatibility Toolkit to apply the PrinterIsolationAware fix to affected applications using the Compatibility Administrator tool.
