Thursday, October 30, 2008 10:13 AM
Here is a frustrating little error. The problem occurs when trying to print reports from a report server that is not properly updated on a client machine which has been. Updating the SQL Server installation using Microsoft Update (Not just Windows update) fixed this on my local development box, however I had to dig a little deeper to get it to work on our production box which is 64 bit. The root of the problem is this: If you are using SSRS to print the reports, the way it works is that an Active X control is downloaded to the client machine and is used to print the report. However, there was a security flaw in Active X controls which Microsoft recently patched by adding "Kill Bits": http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/956391.mspx This patch was made on October 14th (conveniently in the middle of the release cycle for this project) and has the unfortunate side effect of killing the RS Client Print Class which is the actual Active X client print control responsible for printing SSRS reports. Thankfully, Microsoft has released SQL Server updates which when run on the machine which houses the SSRS instance, also fix the Active X control which is seamlessly downloaded to client machines. On a particular server (our clients production server in this case) which was running the 64 bit version of SQL 2005, even though we ran the Microsoft updates, the correct patch was not applied. If you are having this problem, make sure that the SQL Server Reporting Services is updated to at least build 9.0.3073 and you will be good to go! If you have patched the server and the clients are still having problems, have them uninstall the control by selecting Tools-->Internet Options--> and then Manage Addons from the Programs tab. If you are unable to remove it from there, check the C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files directory of the client machine. Once it has been successfully removed, it will reinstall when a report is printed from a properly configured SSRS Server. Here is a thread that you can follow for more information about this problem, http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4038983&SiteID=1 However, in the end in order to upgrade my production x64 SQL Server past build 9.0.3069, we needed to contact Microsoft, but I expect this will not be the case soon.