I support a form generation software that was programmed in VB6. I have been supporting this program for many years now. I am not a programmer myself, I am just the supporting technician for our customers. The programmers are long gone.
I have an issue with this program printing that is starting to escalate.
It has worked on all operating systems since Windows XP and has been plugging along ever since. I have had customers over the years have printing conflicts (program locks up when printing) with very individualized fixes (usually a non-essential process causing a conflict or just a mere reboot) but since Windows 7, 8 and now 10, the problem seems to be increasing and much harder to resolve. I have some customers that I cannot find a resolution for (mostly Win10 customers), and this never used to be the case. Is there some ActiveX control or firewall setting or something in that nature that I can try? My usual resolve is to take them through Details in Task Manager and end the process that we find to be conflicting. Lately I have run into just having Microsoft Edge running that can cause the issue, which is odd since up until now it has never been an actual program the user launches, just a background process.
I am including below, a list of exe's that have been known to cause the issue as of late (in Windows 10):
bcmdeviceandtaskservice.exe (a Dell security device?)
browser_broker.exe (Edge utility?)
vprot.exe (AVG search tool bar utility?)
skype.exe
Any idea what these processes are doing to cause the program to lock up when trying to print?
Is their a setting in Windows to by-pass this conflict and allow this old program to print?
Like I said, each customers resolve is specific to their system and the processes that they are running, but I am wondering is there some overall setting that can resolve what happens to be going on here? Maybe I have been taking the long way and just putting a band-aide on the problem and not going to the source of the real fix?
This may not be the correct forum and if so I apologize for taking your time, but I am grasping at straws here and thought what better place then to ask VB programmers?!
If you need additional information please let me know!
Thank you,
Therese