KES for Windows 12: printing order is much slower when Device Control component is running [KES for Windows]

[Antipova Anna]

Advice and Solutions (Forum Knowledgebase) Disclaimer. Read before using materials.

Problem Description, Symptoms & Impact

In KES 12.0, the way Device Control component works has been changed. See changelog: https://support.kaspersky.com/help/KESWin/12.0/en-US/127969.htm

Due to these changes, you may notice that printing order becomes slow after you have upgraded KES to version 12.0 or higher. This delay may be around 30-60s or even 10-15 minutes. When you disable KES, it becomes instant. In some exceptional cases, the delay may be so big that it's impossible to print anything and the system hangs. The issue affects both local printers and network printers.

Diagnostics

First of all, test if the issue persists with Device Control component disabled. If it does, move any device to a separate group for testing, create a new default KES policy there and check if the issue persists on default policy or not. If everything is fine under default policy, this is a clear sign that something is wrong with your configuration.

Additionally, try latest PF for KES and check if the issue persists on it. There are some optimizations there that fix some Device Control issues and it can improve the performance, but if the issue is in the policy configuration, it won't help much.

Workaround & Solution

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Select a host for troubleshooting and move it to a test group
2. Install latest pf on it and reboot check the situation
3. Check if the issue is caused by Device Control component and if the issue persists if this component is disabled
4. Check if the issue persists under main policy and under default policy
5. Check policy configuration and check how many devices have been added to Trusted Devices list. If there are several hundred entries or more, try to find a way to reduce their amount. 

Please see this public article for more details: https://support.kaspersky.com/KESWin/12.1/en-US/38595.htm

It states "it is not recommended to add more than 1000 trusted devices, as this can cause system instability."

To reduce the list of trusted devices, you can use wildcard * for the same type of printer.