Slow connection to network printers

[livpie]

I have a customer who is having an issue with it taking a long time to connect to his network printers. The lag comes right after you hit the print button and the print dialogue opens up. It is also laggy if you try to switch to a different network printer after successfully connecting to the first one. It will take anywhere between 1-5 minutes to connect to a printer.

The printers are networked through a SBS2003 machine. He is running Win XP on his workstation. I installed the driver directly on his computer and still had significant lag connecting to the printer. The other workstatinos don't experiecne the same lag when connecting to the printer.

He is on a network of about 12 computers.

If anyone could point me in a direction as what to do in determining where the slow down is occuring I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!
Tom

 

[mkeathley]

Does he have any lexmark software on hsi copmputer? Is their a service called LexBce?

Make sure and remove all other printer software/drivers you can.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Agreed...look at the installed printer drives.....most importantly..including looking on the server. Done not only in add/remove programs, but in the printers folder...server properties...drivers tab...this is the deep method of uninstalling leftover drivers.

Once workstations and server are cleansed...download/install the latest drivers onto the server...install, configure..share out.

From the workstations...start..run... \\servername\printsharename.... right click Install. Workstation will pull down the matching drivers of the server and all should be good.

 

[FoolishTech]

See if this article applies: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950326

 

[jbartlett323]

Another thing you might try after the above, is to disable SNMP (assuming they don't use it for monitoring) across all printers or at least the affected ones. This is done directly on the printer interface. I have had this slow down print connections many times. Sometimes to select users, sometimes the entire network. If it doesn't work, re-enable it so its there if it needs to be in the future.

 

[drjones]

I have twice had printing issues directly related to faulty switches and cabling.

At one clients' office, they began having printing issues after a large power outage. The printers all appeared online, I could ping them, connect no problem at all. Send a print job and it just disappeared; didn't get hung in the queue, no errors, nothing, but it also didn't print. Replaced the switch that the three printers were plugged into and it all started working perfectly.

At another clients' they had issues with the large multifunction constantly going offline and all sorts of printing headaches, though very strangely, absolutely no other network issues. We went back and forth for weeks; the copier techs claiming it was the network or workstations and us claiming it was the copier.

We ended up discovering that there was in fact some faulty work done at the patch panel; we re-terminated the cables and it's been 100% since then. Also upgraded them from 10/100 to a Gig switch to improve speeds within the office.

So, I would definitely look at your cabling, switches and other network gear.

It REALLY threw me for a loop at the second place where the network was absolutely 100%, other than printing, and caused by bad cabling. Typically you'd expect them to get booted from the server or internet at least once in a while, but that practically NEVER happened.