PrintToPrinter() crashes windows service

Question

Hi,
We have a windows service written in VB.NET using Crystal Reports 2008 SP2 (latest fix pack has also been applied).
It is a multithreaded solution that generates and prints reports from an Oracle 10 db.
The loading and printing of the reports are done in different threads so the interaction with the CR
runtimes could in theory occur at the same time from 3 different threads.
The printers that are used are network printers (from a print server) but they are added ("installed") on the server
running the windows service.
Our problem is that an unhandled exception (unmanaged I guess) is quite often thrown after
calling the method PrintToPrinter() which brings the whole windows service down and leaves
a general error message in Event Viewer:
.NET Runtime 2.0 Error
"Faulting application "myapp.exe", version 1.0.0.0, stamp 461c7030, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, stamp 41109655, debug? 0, fault address 0x00018fea."
(The "faulting module" is not allways the same but most often ntdll)
We haven't found any way to catch this exception. We have error handlers in all threds and we have also tried to
add a global unhandled exception handler for UnhandledExceptions without any luck.
I'm aware of the fact that (introduced in .NET framework 2.0) this behaviour to bring down the current app is "by design" if an unhandled exception is thrown and not caught in a thread of the current app domain.
It seems that the application crash much more frequently when PrintToPrinter() is called at the same time from at least two of the app's threads.
We also had problems with the same app before upgrading to CR 2008 from the version of CR that comes with VS 2005.
The problem was exactly the same except that when calling the PrintToPrinter() method the thread hanged and never returned instead of crashing the entire app.
I assume the exception is thrown when CR is communicating with the print drivers but how to proceed?
Are there any logging done by the CR runtime?
Is there anyway to debug the CR runtime?
Anyone have experienced anything similar?
More info:
OS: Windows Server 2003
.NET Framework: 2.0
CR: Crystal Reports 2008 SP2 (latest fix pack)
DB: Oracle 10
Printers: Mostly HP LaserJet 4350
/jiijiijii

Answer 1

Another option would be to use RAS to print your report, seems to work better than PrintToPrinter:
               System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument pDoc = new System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument();
            CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers.PrintReportOptions rasPROpts = new CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers.PrintReportOptionsClass();
            CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.ReportDefModel.PrintOptions newOpts = new PrintOptionsClass();
               pDoc.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = cboCurrentPrinters.Text;          
               rasPROpts.PrinterName = cboCurrentPrinters.Text;               
               rasPROpts.PaperSize = (CrPaperSizeEnum)
                    pDoc.PrinterSettings.PaperSizes[cboCurrentPaperSizes.SelectedIndex].Kind;
               rasPROpts.PaperSource = (CrPaperSourceEnum)
                    pDoc.PrinterSettings.PaperSources[cboDefaultPaperTrays.SelectedIndex].Kind;
               CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.ReportDefModel.CrPaperSourceEnum.crPaperSourceManual;
            rasPROpts.JobTitle = "MYPrintJob";
               rptClientDoc.PrintOutputController.PrintReport(rasPROpts);
               MessageBox.Show("Printing report.", "RAS", MessageBoxButtons.OK,MessageBoxIcon.Information );
Thank you
Don