Printing problems

[backupworker]

Here's the situation:

Got W2K file/print server with about 40 printers. We've been having issues where users are able to print fine to the printers, then all of a sudden, their data in their excel spreadsheets do not print out. The only thing that prints out is the gridlines. This has been happening sporadically from user to user, and with different printers, so I'm pretty sure the problem is not with the printers itself. (Majority of printers are HP).

A workaround we've been using has been to create a local printer and creating a port with the printers' ip address. This way, they are not going through the server to print.

Also, when I login with a domain admin account, I am able to print correctly from the same computer to the network printer. It is only if the user is logged in that they have issues printing the data.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[dmandell]

A couple of things that might be worth checking.

1. Are you low on disk space of your print server
This can cause sporadic printing issue if the space to spool the print files is limited.

2. Are you using HP TCP/IP printing ports on the print server or Microsoft TCP/IP printing ports? I had a similar issue once with HP TCP/IP ports.

3. Do you see anything in the eventvwr for the print server? like constant crashes and recoveries of the print spooler?

4. 40 printers is a lot to spool off of one server. do you have enough RAM in your print server?

hope this helps,
Dana

 

[backupworker]

Thanks for your quick reply Dana.

1. We have approximately 160 GB of free space on our server.

2. We use standard TCP/IP ports when setting up the printers.

3. There isn't anything unusual going on with the print spooler or with the server as reported by the event log.

4. We have 4 GB of RAM in this server.

Thanks!

 

[dmandell]

With respect to #1
I do not know how your disks are partitioned, but is the free space on the same drive as the print spooler files are being generated?

If the printers are HP printers, depending on the model, you can print out the printer error logs. Sometimes this can show errors that might be of issue.

If these are HP printers, were they installed with the HP admin tool or manually setup through Windows. Depending on this it can install a different TCP/IP printing port driver. (Really)

If the issues are really intermittent, can you correlate them with any networking traffic. Does it happen at peak hours, etc.?

Can you identify a document or spreadsheet that always gives users issues?

Just some more thoughts,
hope it helps,
Dana

 

[backupworker]

Yes, the spool files are on the drive that has 160 GB of free space.

The weird thing is that it only happens to specific users, usually one user will have an issue printing to a printer, while the person sitting next to them is printing to the same printer without any problems. So I do not think the issue is with the printer itself.

The printers were set up manually through Windows. We are not using an HP admin tool.

Networking issues would impact more than one user at the time, so don't think that's it either. Right now, there's only one user having issues. There was one user that was having issues with a different printer about a week ago so the times are not simultaneous. They are both working with different documents so there is not one particular document that is the problem.

I have tried using PCL5e and PCL6 drivers and it still does not work when I am logged on as the user. I tried making the user a local admin of her machine to see if that would make any difference, with no luck.

Thanks for the brainstorming.

 

[dmandell]

It sounds like you have thanngs well narrowed down. Maybe a possible users account issue. I suppose that is still a possibility that if might be related to the actual system the user is sitting at?

Can that use print without issue from other workstations?
Do other users accounts from that workstation have issues?

Here's an interesting user account test to do.
Delete problem printer from the users computer.
Disconnect any mapped network connections to the print server from that computer.

Logged on as the user,
Map a new network drive (conect as) to the print server with your domain admin account or any account with priviledges.
Reinstall the printer. Try to print with the network drive still mapped to the print server. This will use the permissions of the admin for printing. if the problem is gone, look to an issue with that specific user account.

Dana

 

[backupworker]

Dana,

Think we've got this one figured out. Seems their profile got corrupted, and when we created a new profile for the user, they were working again. Weird. But it works now.

Thanks for all the help and advice!

 

[dmandell]

Excellent!
Glad you worked it out.

One question for future reference.
Was it the user's local profile, or domain account?
Dana

 

[backupworker]

It was the user's domain account profile that got corrupted.