Topic: XP Home printing problem (SME 6.0.1)

[Ness]

Hi all,

I’m looking for help with a weird shared printer problem on SME Server 6.0.1

For many months we’ve had 4 or more PCs using SME Server for file and printer sharing and all the normal other stuff. Some of these PCs are XP Pro, two are XP Home. All are upto date on SP's

About 6 weeks ago, one PC (we’ll call it PC(1)) started to respond slowly on a print request. When sending a print from say MS Word, rather than the job firing up pretty much instantly as it does on all other machines, it runs like a dog and takes up to 2 minutes to fire the print off.

The state now is that when we try to print from any application on PC(1) to the server printers (one on USB, one on LPT), the PC returns an error as if it cannot see the printers at all.

If we try to view the properties of the printers (in the PC control panel), while the printers are visible, it has been taking upto a minute just to get the properties window up.

On other PCs, this problem is not seen.

In tests, I removed the USB printer from the server and connected it to a good XP machine and shared it on the LAN.

PC(1) saw the printer immediately and properties was instant with fast printing.

The problem only occurs for this one PC but is seen when trying to print on either printer attached to SME Server.

I’ve tested PC(1) to SME Server printing with different user accounts and have even set the IP configuration as fixed (inc DNS and Gateway) but the printer problem remains.

I checked on the old WinXPLogon.REG thing and that’s applied so I have no idea what to check next.

All other functions of this machine are normal, web access, access and opening of user shares and ibays etc all fast as ever.

Its just printing….

Help!

Where do I look now?

All ideas gratefully accepted…

Chris

[CharlieBrady]

About 6 weeks ago, one PC (we’ll call it PC(1)) started to respond slowly on a print request. When sending a print from say MS Word, rather than the job firing up pretty much instantly as it does on all other machines, it runs like a dog and takes up to 2 minutes to fire the print off.

The state now is that when we try to print from any application on PC(1) to the server printers (one on USB, one on LPT), the PC returns an error as if it cannot see the printers at all.

This definitely sounds like a Windows problem to me.

[Reinhold]

Ness,

(sounds familiar...)
Try clearing the SME printerqueue.
(use Search Siteon the upper left and/or
look for a contrib called
saco-mitel-lprng-monitor ...
install it and use it to remove any "stuck" print jobs)


Regards
Reinhold

[Ness]

Thanks for the idea Reinhold...

saco-mitel-lprng-monitor ...

One step ahead of you here, I already have a contrib called PrinterQueue Admin installed. Its a little "lumpy" but has allowed be to flush the queues sucessfully.

If you thing the saco-mitel-lprng-monitor is good quality too, I may uninstall the existing on and try your idea.

In fact, I'm about to burn XP Pro onto a spare HDD and load it onto the suspect machine.... more as it happens.

Chris

[Reinhold]

I already have a contrib called PrinterQueue Admin installed.

...which may be just a newer version "with the same old looks  
(but it's a jewel for me - thanks saco !)

If flushing doesn't help (it does remove the "few min stuck" here) ...
I sure do hope your new XP-Pro Install will (which I doubt  however )

Regards
Reinhold

[Ness]

Here's the scoop then...

I built XP Pro on the same machine, added printers and installed Office. Hey presto, speedy loading of everything for this user. This is XPPro SP2

I also built a new XP Home drive with the same setup and it does appear to suffer from significant lag when connecting to printers. This is XPHome with SP1.

I've decided to quit investigations - I don't have time and since the XP PRo load is legitimate, I'll go with what works now and monitor it for a while.

Thanks

Chris

[Tib]

Hi

With me it's the other way arround ... XP Home is running fine and XP Pro is running like a dog  while trying to print ... Both Service Pack 2.

When looking at the network traffic monitor there seems to be a lot of traffic on the XP Pro Machine when printing.

I haven't tried to fix this as I don't use that machine much .. I use Suse and it runs fine with the printers.

Regards

Tib

[Ness]

Yeah, I seemed to see loads of network traffic to the dodgy PC when caling up a network printer too.

The new load is fine however.

Very odd..

Chris