Intermittent Network Printing Issue 1

[Happo]

I have 2 XP Pro machines in a workgroup using a shared printer connected to one of them. Several times a day though printing becomes a problem for the system that is NOT physically connected to it. There is no warning and it happens across a wide variety of apps (all simultaneously), I click Print and the application stops responding. The only way to rectify this is to End the application and reboot, then printing is fine again. This has been going on for several weeks but there seems to be no pattern whatsoever. The network connection, and everything else, remains active and functioning perfectly when this problem presents. I have unin/reinstalled print driver/software on both machines to no avail.
Any ideas on where to start would be greatly appreciated.
Daniel.

 

[bcastner]

. first step is to see if there is a newer driver from the printer manufacturer. Download and expand the driver to a folder you will be able to find later;

. second step is to clean all the drivers, on both the printer server machine, and the "remote" machine. Run Cleanspl.exe from the Windows 2003 reskit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en

. Now rebuild the network printer on the machine hosting the printer.

. Finally, use the Printer and Faxes wizard to add this new printer.

I have seen a thousand ways to try and deal with the issue you mention, but assuming the Event Logs on both machines are clean, the rebuild process will take approximately twenty minutes and you are done.

 

[Happo]

Thanks Bill. I will follow those instructions and see how I go but I am out of the office until next week so will post back results after I return. Thanks again.
Daniel.

 

[chuka]

Hi

Do you have VPN installed on the the host computer?
Sometimes VPN's have nasty habit of preventing and shared information includes printing

 

[Happo]

Thanks chuka,
It's not a VPN. Still not back in office so can't do much right now.
Daniel.

 

[Happo]

So far so good, I followed your instructions Bill, I already had the latest driver but had not run cleanspl.exe before and printer has been trouble free for 9 hours straight now. From here on, no news is good news...
Thankyou!
Daniel.

 

[bcastner]

I use cleanspl.exe anymore because it is for Win2k and XP clients a very effective way to do what manually is a true p.i.a. to do. See Bruce Sanderson, MS-MVP Printing, notes as to the manual way I did a bizillion times before (and with great gratitude to Bruce for the suggestion):

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

There is a bad joke about Windows repair, in which an Windows expert named linney, a mechanic, and a regular guy travel in a car that breaks down. The regular guy says "The car is broken, we have to walk". The mechanic says "we have to rebuild the engine. Get out and start taking it apart." And the Windows guy says: lets get out of the car, get back in the car, and try to restart it."

(Hey, I did not promise a funny Windows joke).

But sometimes with Windows what you have to do is remove what is there, and restart; this allows you to rebuild from scratch. And for printer issues, Device Manager does not quite do the job. So, I would have followed the advice of the Windows expert named linney in my version of the joke, but whould have checked that there was possibly bad gas in the fuel system.

Best wishes,
Bill Castner