Symptom

The system issues an error message in the trace of the sapwin.dll:

Error: CreateDCW failed: The operation completed successfully. Or the system issues an equivalent error
message that corresponds to the language setting.
After this error occurs, you cannot print on the affected printer until SAPSprint service restarts.
Other terms
CreateDCW, CreateDC, SAPSprint
Reason and Prerequisites
The problem can only occur if you use a SAPWIN device type to print. The output is executed through a
Windows API using a Windows printer driver. If an error occurs with one of the printer drivers (for
example, memory is not released), the problem described above may occur. This error occurs mainly
when you call CreateDC but it may also occur in other Windows GDI calls. The messages in the trace are
similar to those described above.
This problem is not caused by the SAP source code and therefore an immediate correction is not possible.
In addition, analyzing this problem is very difficult because it cannot be reproduced and because it occurs
only after the service experienced a long runtime. At the moment, we do not know how long it will be
until a solution is found. Currently, we recommend you use the workaround described below to minimize
the effects of the problem.
Solution
SAP recommends the following solution:
1. Install a SAPSprint with version 1020 or higher. Also refer to Note 927074.
As of this version, SAPSprint starts automatically after the CreateDC error occurs. If you do not want this
to occur for whatever reason, you can deactivate it by setting the option IgnoreDCError to 1. Note:
Automatic restart works only within certain limits. If the problem occurs too often, the system response is
no longer as required.2. If possible, schedule the restart of the service for a time when printing is not
taking place. The probability of the problem occurring increases as the runtime of the service increases.3.
As a result of the automatic restart of SAPSprint Services, the SAPSprint process is available again after a
very short time. However, due to the short period of unavailability, all printers that are defined on the
SAPSprint server in the SAP system are blocked for about 5 minutes. This is not necessary and, depending
on the amount of print requests, may lead to an accumulation of jobs. The following profile parameters
may affect how long a printer is blocked for:
rspo/tcp/retrytime = 1
rspo/host_spool/check_retries = 5
rspo/lpq/temp_disable_time = 1
If you shorten retrytime and temp_disable_time (for example, to 1), this prevents the printers being
blocked in almost all cases. You must change these profile parameters only if you are using SAPSprint as
the print server. If you use another print server that does not automatically restart, you must use the
default values.4. Identifying the faulty printer driver
SAP will create a test scenario that will try to identify the printer drivers that cause the problems.
However, we currently cannot guarantee to solve the problem due to insufficient test results.