Hotfix For Poor Printing Performance In Windows 7
Microsoft recently provided customers with a hotfix to fix poor printing performance issues in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Microsoft confirmed that "on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, the printing performance may be poor compared to the performance on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008".
"Additionally, a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 consumes more CPU resources when you print a document."
An example of this behavior would be a 100% cpu usage for a long time in the Windows Task Manager when printing documents on computers running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Best option to find out if your system is affected by poor printing performance is to open the Windows Task Manager and monitor the cpu usage while printing.
It is usually possible to notice this without opening the task manager as you will notice slow downs happening whenever you are printing documents on the system.
According to Microsoft, the "issue occurs because of a performance regression in spooler behavior on single-processor systems that are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2".
This means that only single-core cpu systems running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 may be affected by the performance issue.
A hotfix is available for users affected by the issue. A total of three hotfixes are offered, targeting 32-bit, 64-bit and ia64 systems. Each hotfix contains the fix for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Users need to make sure that they are affected by the issue before installing the hotfix on their system.
The hotfix is a temporary solution, and it is likely that Microsoft will release a patch in the near future to address the printing performance issue.
Update: Microsoft has released the hotfix as part of an update rollup to all Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. It is no longer necessary to install the hotfix manually unless you are installing updates manually on Windows PCs instead and have not installed the rollup.
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