How to Fix Error 0x0000011b When Printing over the Network

This practical guide walks through how to fix error 0x0000011b when printing over the network, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

In January 2021, Microsoft released a security update to fix the "Windows Print Spooler Spoofing Vlnerability" issue, error code CVE-2021-1678. In fact, this update does not automatically protect devices from vulnerabilities. It creates a new Registry key that administrators can use to increase the level of RPC authentication commonly used for printing over the network.

In other words, this update does not patch the vulnerability unless a Windows administrator creates the following Registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print] "RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled"=dword:00000001

However, in the September Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has automatically enabled this setting by default for all Windows devices. Even if your computer has not created the RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled key in the Registry, the protection is still enabled.

And as soon as this protection setting was enabled by default, Windows users started getting error 0x0000011b when printing over the network.

This error mainly occurs in home networks, and small businesses often cannot take advantage of the Kerberos setup on a Windows domain. Removing the September Patch Tuesday helps you fix the problem but leave your computer vulnerable to two PrintNightmare and MSHTML vulnerabilities that are actively exploited by hackers.

So the temporary solution is to disable the CVE-2021-1678 vulnerability patch until Microsoft releases new instructions. This solution is less dangerous because CVE-2021-1678 is not actively exploited by hackers.

Details on how to fix network printing error 0x0000011b

To fix network printing error 0x0000011b without removing the update (KB5005565) you need to do the following:

Press Windows + R to open Run then type regedit and press Enter to open Registry Editor.

Find the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print

Create a new DWORD-32 bit value named RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled and set its value to 0 like the picture you can see below:

Or there is an easier method that you download the .reg file that this guide makes available and then double-click it to automatically generate a quick DWORD-32 bit value.

Download file Fix-0x0000011b.reg here.

Restart the machine and try printing to see if that fixes the problem.

If you need to restore RpcAuthnLevelPrivacyEnabled, download the following .reg file and run:

Download file Active-RpcAuthn.reg here.

Good luck!