How To Enable Interactive Services Detection

[Frank_S]

Turn on Interactive Services Detection (a windows server service) in order to view the behavior of NPrinting in the background service (Session 0).
 

• NPrinting runs in the background on the NPrinting server as a service.
• NPrinting sends API calls to the QlikView Desktop in the background service which is why you will see the QV desktop and not the NPrinting designer running in the background service.

Interactive services detection:

• is a Windows server service and is not necessary for the day to day operation of NPrinting.
• allows you to view the behavior of NPrinting in the background server service
• enables you to troubleshoot issues with the QV desktop in the background service as NPrinting sends API calls to it.

Resolution:

Note: Miscrosoft has fully disabled Interactive Service Detection starting with Windows 10 Build 1803 and Windows Server 2016 and 2019. Starting with these versions, access to Session 0 is no longer possible.


1. Open the registry editor ie: regedit.exe
2. Navigate to the following path:
hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\windows
3. Edit the 'NoInteractiveServices' REG_DWORD value from 1 to 0.



4. Close the registry editor
5. Start the interactive services detection service in the 'services' panel


NOTE: You may also now manage (start, stop, disable) Interactive Services Detection from the Windows Services console shown above. Stop and disable this service if you no longer require this for troubleshooting NPrinting background service issues.

6. When the Interactive Services Detection window appears on your task bar (flashing task bar item) just click on it. The following will appear on your screen.

You will then click "view message" to observe if:
 

• Personal Edition appears: this indicates that the NP service account has lost it's manually assigned user CAL. In this case, do file open in server to retrieve the manually assigned user CAL from the QV Production server
• Macro action: If a macro appears, click 'allow safe macros'.
  • NOTE: if the macro code has been changed in any way, you will need to log on as the NPrinting service account and re-enable the macro as a 'safe' macro' or enable the macro via the background interactive service window.

These are the most common issues causing NPrinting tasks and schedules to hang.

 Alternative solution: use a third party tool to access Session 0 at any time

[pasgalbarra]

Hi @Frank_S ,

I would like to active this interactive service detection, do you know  what impact these changes could have on the server and qlik performance?

Thanks.

[Sonja_Bauernfeind]

Hello @pasgalbarra No significant performance impact is anticipated.

[pasgalbarra]

Hi @Sonja_Bauernfeind ,

Thanks for your answer, and do you know if it has a minor/medium impact?

[Frank_S]

There is virtually no impact, if any at all, and is NOT required for Nprinting operations as mentioned in the article.
Further, this Windows service is not available in Windows 2016 or higher by default. Only windows 2012 R2 an earlier versions.

Lastly Windows 2012 R2 is reaching end of life this year.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-server-2012-r2-end-of-support

If you want to understand performance impact of this or any Windows service or program, I would recommend using built-in windows Performance Monitoring (or 3rd party) tools to help you with those endeavors.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/windows-performance-monitor-overview...

Kind regards...

[pasgalbarra]

Thanks @Frank_S 

Do you know if there is alternative to analyze the behavior of Nprinting?

best regards

[Frank_S]

I anticipated your question and answered that above.