Microsoft Confirms Windows 11 Universal Print Issues Affecting Enterprise Printers
Printing disruptions, aborted jobs, and connectivity failures are affecting some Universal Print deployments, leaving IT teams to rely on workarounds while Microsoft investigates the root causes.
Key Takeaways:
- Microsoft has confirmed two ongoing issues affecting Universal Print deployments.
- Some printers migrated from Windows 10 to Windows 11 may stop working after certain updates are installed.
- Microsoft is investigating connectivity issues affecting some Konica Minolta devices and has published temporary mitigation guidance.
Microsoft has confirmed two ongoing problems affecting Universal Print in Windows 11. The company has warned that printers originally installed on Windows 10 may stop working after upgrading to Windows 11 and installing certain updates. Secondly, some Konica Minolta devices intermittently lose communication with the cloud-based printing service, which prevents them from retrieving print jobs.
These issues can disrupt enterprise printing operations, which leaves print jobs stuck in a pending state, disables printing altogether, and increases support workloads for IT administrators. In some cases, jobs may eventually be marked as aborted, which creates frustration for users and delays business processes. These problems have reportedly remained unresolved for several months, which has extended the operational impact.
“There is a regression in Windows 11 KB5083769 and later that may cause Universal Print printers that were originally installed on Windows 10 to stop functioning. When selecting an affected printer in the print dialog, you may see the following error, and the Print button will be disabled: Your printer has experienced an unexpected configuration problem. 0x80004005,” Microsoft explained. “Additionally, attempting to print a test page from Printer Properties will result in the following error message, and may show the error code 0x000003e3: The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.”
Microsoft provides a temporary fix for Windows 11 Universal Print issues
Microsoft has acknowledged the problems and published mitigation guidance. Organizations experiencing the Windows 11 regression must currently apply a manual workaround, while administrators dealing with affected Konica Minolta devices are advised to monitor printer status through the Azure portal and engage Konica Minolta support when required. Microsoft is currently working with the manufacturer to investigate the communication failures.
Universal Print remains a valuable cloud-based alternative to traditional print servers, which simplifies printer management and reduces on-premises infrastructure requirements. However, the latest issues highlight that when platform updates or vendor integration problems occur, organizations may have to rely on manual remediation and vendor coordination until a permanent fix becomes available.
Rabia has a master's degree in Software Engineering and she has years of experience writing professionally about Microsoft products and other technologies. Rabia has also written for OnMSFT.com as well as Windows Report. She is always up to date on t...
