unable to load client print control (redux)

I was checking Analytics for my site this week and to no great surprise my post on Unable to load client print control has crept back into the top 5 posts.  I say no great surprise because this was my tweet on Tuesday "RSClientPrint ActiveX Control, how I hate you. You and MS09-062 are making my day hell"  The unable to load client print control issue had resurface in our corporate environment.  Fortunately, this time I was better positioned to understand the issue and resolve it.  Last Friday, the admins pushed down a host of patches and the title of one of them caught my eye, "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-008 - Critical

Cumulative Security Update of ActiveX Kill Bits (978262)"  I should look that up on Monday but I had forgotten about it for all of an hour of being at work when I had a trouble ticket come in stating a user can't print.  

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Windows Internet Explorer 

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Unable to load client print control. 

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OK 

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Maybe it's a fluke/isolated incident and they had a workaround, they exported to PDF and printed from there.  Good users, way to think!  Next day, more tickets all with the same symptoms.

I worked with one of my awesome LAN admins (Tim A.) and we were able to determine the order of operations to get the affected servers corrected and this time, without requiring the reboot we said was needed in the original blog post.

1) Stop SQL Server Reporting Services service

2) Uninstall Report Viewer 2005 via Add/Remove Programs

3) Install updated Report Viewer 2005 (KB971117)

4) Install SQL Server update appropriate to version/service pack (KB970894/KB970896)

5) Start SQL Server Reporting Services

Resources

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS10-008.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-062.mspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/10/15/reporting-services-and-the-ms09-062-gdr-gdi.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/brianhartman/archive/2009/10/13/gdi-updated-again.aspx

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jonathan_kehayias/archive/2009/10/13/ms09-062-critical-vulnerabilities-in-gdi-could-allow-remote-code-execution.aspx

Unable to load client print control

Updated resolution at unable to load client print control (redux)

Wednesday, we started evaluating the upcoming patches from MS.  I say we but it's part of our DQA group that are the guinea pig^H^H^H^H testers for patches.  They opened a ticket on a project indicating the the printing from within SSRS was broken.  It generated a popup error

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Windows Internet Explorer
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Unable to load client print control.

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OK   
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Off to google I go and there are plenty of people suffering with the same issue after the patch. e.g. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4006172&SiteID=1

That patch enables a killbit on the ActiveX control that handles printing from within SSRS. Even with patching SQL Servers, we were unable to get the thing to work. We'd end up with lots of entries in C:\Windows\Downloaded Program Files\ and CONFLICT folders within it but if you clicked Tools, Internet Options, Program tab, Advanced options (or something like that) you could see all the objects IE could load or currently had loaded. It just couldn't get the code to load into itself. We verified it was downloading from the server as expected but to no avail.

Best summary I can make is that the CU9 only touches the SQL Server stuff. The Report Viewer is something that doesn't count as part of that fix. You can test this by looking at the version in the GAC for Microsoft.ReportViewer.Webforms

Our eventual resolution boils down to
1) Install the .NET 3.5 runtime on the IIS servers

2) Download the Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2008 and run the ReportViewer.exe on the server http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CC96C246-61E5-4D9E-BB5F-416D75A1B9EF&displaylang=en

3) Update our web pages to use the 9.0.0.0 version of the Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms

As a side note, they have an updated version of the 2005 track of the control (8.0.0.0) but that does not appear to correct the issue. Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2005 Service Pack 1, published 9/9/2008 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82833f27-081d-4b72-83ef-2836360a904d&DisplayLang=en

Hope this helps anyone who stumbles on this post.


{edit}
Since this post seems to get plenty of hits, I thought I should update with the steps we finally went with (ran into this today with some unpatched servers)

1) Install hotfix 3282 for SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 KB953752 (Cumulative Update 9)
2) Install MS08-052 SQL Server GDI+ Update
3) Un-install ReportViewer 2005
4) Reboot---this is the key, must reboot before installing the new version
5) Install ReportViewer SP1 version 2.0.50727.1843