XP SP2 slows network printing 5-10X

Installing SP2 seems to dramatically slow down network printing from ANY application - even Notepad. I have 2 identical Dell boxes - P4 2.8 GHz 512 MB RAM running XP. Have installed SP 2 on only 1 so far. When select Print it used to take 1-2 seconds for the printer selection dialog box to display, with SP2 it takes 10 -30 seconds. Once the window to select the desired printer comes up, printing goes as quickly as normal. Have turned off Norton AV and the windows firewall - no change. The printers are all HP LaserJets and DeskJets, accessed via TCP/IP and are hanging off Win 98 boxes. I reinstalled the print drivers on the SP2 system - no change. I also have systems at 3 other sites set up similarly (XP printing to Win 98) and have the same problem showing up there, along with some generally slower application performance.

 

Hello lightft,

Have you looked into updated drivers from HP? A lot of SP2 problems are driver related.

Regards - Charles

 

Print dialog appearance time not printer specific

Charles -

Thanks for the thought. Drivers are as current as possible. HP's drivers for the LJ2100 date from Feb 2004 - latest on their site, and I also have my own default printer as an NEC SS1800 which their site says to use only the drivers that come with XP - nothing newer available.

Finally, the window I am talking about is the list of ALL available printers one gets when selecting File > Print. At that point, although a default has been specified, none have been selected for the specific job. I get the same delay before the window appears whether I have selected print to fax, to my Brother labelwriter, an NEC laser or an HP deskjet.

I'm not sure what layer this call is at, but I'm pretty sure it is strictly within windows and not driver specific. I mentioned HP primarily because these are fairly common printers, not an oddball with no support.

Thanks again for your reply.

Lightft

 

lightft

What type of Network do you have ?

Do you have a Network printer or is it a SHARED Printer. Maybe even a USB ? I did have one of them and it was much slower from one of the other machines. And it required this machine to be on at all times.

I now have a Networkable Printer ( plugs into the Router ) and it prints just as fast from one PC as it does the other. And no longer requires this machine to be on for others to use it.

XP2 had absolutey no effect on it now But did with the USB Printer.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob -

Most of the printers are shared out off a Win 98 box which is used to give me one point to check when a queue goes down ( I have 10 PC's on line in my home/home office) and I have similar set ups in several other places.

Also, my NEC SS1800 is direct off the network. What is slow is the dialog box that allows me to select a printer. Once I select one, no matter which printer it is or how connected, everything runs as fast as it always did.

Further, this does not seem to be application specific. The SP2 box in another location that is slow does not even have Office installed on it yet. Something as basic as Notepad is dramatically slower, as is Wordperfect. I hope to get Office 2003 on that box over the weekend and compare Word and Excel, but at present even Acrobat is much slower to bring up the printer selection dialog.

On the other hand, selecting Start > Printers and Faxes brings up the same list almost instantaneously with either SP1 or SP2. In total here, although I have a couple other locations that are acting the same but are a lot simpler, I have 14 print devices connected at a total of 8 different points on the network. I also checked times with the physical printer and the Win 98 print server PC turned off. Changes nothing.

I also tried setting my default printer on the SP2 box to Generic text - Print to File so the driver is whatever windows feels is current with the SP2 update and no network search needs to be involved - still takes 15 seconds to let me select a printer.

 

Well I must say that my question was answered.

And this is far beyond my knowledge now. But it does read like it is something that SP2 may have changed on the one machine.

BillyBob

 

Billy Bob-

I never shake the trees for the easy answers, and I DO appreciate your taking a shot. - as you say - hey, you never know...

Thanks,

Lightft
15 minutes north of Albany

 

To make sure I'm clear on this

- your issue is with being able to select the printer you want rather than with printing?

- setting a printer as the default does not hold between print jobs? Even if you have, for instance, a word document open and print a copy then work some and print again?

 

Nope -

Printing is fine, speed and features are all OK. Defaults hold and any printer can be selected easily and responds appropriately.

Problem is with the printer selection dialog box that comes up when you are in an application and select File > Print. It takes about a second or so with XP SP 1, but up to 30 Seconds with XP SP2. No other known changes.

In all cases, there are printers listed that are elsewhere on a network. What the printers are or where they are, or how they are connected, of whether the default printer is local or not does not seem to make any difference.

I am assuming that some new security check slows down the ability to compile a list of available printers for display and to select from. Once they are on-screen you can select one and print just as fast as always.

I have disabled both the Windows firewall and my AV program with no improvement. I use either Norton Personal 2003 or Symantec Enterprise 8.1.

Any thoughts?

Lightft

 

Update - remove SP2, problem goes away

Just a note: I spent an hour on the phone with MS and their conclusion was:

"Based on our conversation it appears that this case is unresolved ".
"You can use all the Anti-virus including Norton. "

I uninstalled Norton AV and nothing changed. I reinstalled Norton and nothing changed. I uninstalled SP2 and the problem went away.

Why am I not surprised.

Lightft

 

I've had exactly the same problem with printer selection dialog boxes opening very slowly since installing SP2. The problem is printer independent, and happens on or off a network. Curiously, the dialog boxes come up immediately with all MS Office applications and Internet Explorer, but they usually take 30-60 sec to come up if I want to print from another application such as Adobe Acrobat or Netscape. Once they've appeared, printing is fine. Any thoughts, or is this just Microsoft making life hard for competing applications?

 

Printing dialog appearance unpredictable

Roblob -
I wish I had such consistant results. However, MS apps are the ONLY ones that seem to be slowly recovering from SP2. Perhaps that is because they are the ones most likely to be designed to optimize quickly using the MS defrag routine - i.e. modules designed to start on sector boundaries, etc.

Non- MS apps are uniformly slow, but some MS apps are OCCASIONALLY fast. I mean, the printer selection dialog usually comes up in 2-3 seconds without SP2, and usually comes up in 10 - 30 seconds WITH sp2. Word or Excel 2003 will now come up in 1-15 seconds. Sometimes faster than ever before, but usually slower than before. Something tells me you are right, and MS has done some "optimizing" that they are not talking about, that their apps will be able to take advantage of once the prefetch tables are fully rebuilt.

HelpDesk180

 

Hmm. I'm sorry you didnt have a better experience with the MS Support line, lightft.

Before we go putting on tinfoil hats and blaming the evil elite for optimizing msft applications , perhaps a bit of old fashioned troubleshooting is in order.


When one goes into the 'Print' dialog, lots of things are happening. The actual behavior of it is wildly variable depending on the app. In the case of Word, it collects this information on document load, so it knows how to WYSIWYG your doc to match your printer. Its fast, because its already done it before you even open the dialog. This is the obvious explination for why gui office apps don't experience the problem.

Lets talk about NOTEPAD.EXE. If both of you could explain exactly what the experience is when opening notepad, then File->print. Stopwatch it from the time you click to the time it opens. Do it three times from a restart of notepad to get a good average.

I'd like for you to then install a LaserJet4 as a local printer, using inbox HP drivers, and set it as the default. Repeat the above test. Is there a delta?

If you are feeling saucy, i'd like to melt down your spoolers to the basics, and build it back up slowly, as the high probability vector is a print monitor (this is different than a driver).


Good information on cleaning the spooler:
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

Cleanspl.exe (this works on xp)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en

After cleaning up the garbage, reinstall an INBOX driver printer and repeat your test above. Start reinstalling your printers, one at a time, stopping to test after each installation, by 'net stop spooler' 'net start spooler' and running the above test.

This troubleshooting track has an 80% chance of resolving it.

The only other vector i can think of is some freakish shell extension (shellexview) or a external program that is intercepting print calls. This is a pretty low probability path, not the first thing i would look at.

 

Print problem consistent, environment not

JoeHobart -

Thanks for your insight. So far, I have the same issue on 4 networks and one independent setup with a mix of about 10 different printers, some directly off a network, some off a print server box ( usually Win 98 ), some off an XP box, with a mix of NEC, HP, OKI, Canon, Brother, and Xerox laser and ink jet printers. What I am printing to, and where I am does not seem to have much effect. I don't have a LaserJet 4 in the mix, but could set up a LJ4 driver feeding to a 2100 in several locations. I also have multiple 2100's off the same server and they act identically to each other- even when the default is set to a LJ III driver. ( I need that for one VERY old app.)

Again, I have NO problem or unusual delay ONCE I HAVE SELECTED THE PRINT DEVICE. The entire problem occurs as an unusually long delay *before* the option to select a printer is displayed.

I have one network where there are about 10 "ghost" devices that used to be connected and are no longer there. That setup does not respond any slower than networks that are "clean ".

Here are some results from my home network - 8 PC's - all kinds, NEC postscript laser, two new HP inkjet all-in-one's, two old HP deskjets, all cat 5 10/100 thru an SMC 16 port router except the laptop which is wireless at the moment. I am sitting at a system with ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe Mobo, AMD 2800, 512 MB ram, 320 GB SATA raid array for data with 120 GB ATA133 system drive. NO printers directly off this PC except a Brother label printer on a serial port.

NOTE: whenever you FIRST try to print a given document, NOT when you open the app, there will be a 50% or more increase in time before the print dialog box appears. Today that is running at a reliable 14 seconds. Most responses are in under 10 seconds after the first, and slowly get a bit faster. Remember that with SP1, that time maxed at 3 seconds. And yes, it seems that the prefetch data is being rebuilt, because the 30 second waits are no longer appearing... funny, though, if i revert a system to SP1, the prefetch should have to be rebuilt there as well, but times immediately drop to 2-3 seconds.

All tests use the text string: This is a test
Default printer is the NEC SS1800 NP laser in PCL5e mode.

Notepad: New doc 12 secs then 8,7,8,8
New doc 14 then 8,7,9

Word: New doc 14 then 8,6,7,6,6,5

REad Iris Pro (OCR) 8 always

VuePro Image viewer 10,8,8

Adobe Pagemaker 14, then 5,5,5

here's a twist - venerable old Cardfile, which does NOT give you the option to select a printer and always goes directly to the default printer - only 4 seconds until the printer lights up.

This is also the same 4 second delay you get once you select the printer from the slow-to-appear dialog box.

The system is defragged, Spyware checked and AV checked about twice a week. Patches are current.

I am also not a serious MS basher. Sorry if it came across that way. Their Office suite promotes the ability to optimize performance based on being coded to start on sector breaks and thus reduce head travel and time to locate. How many folks have checked out every tweak in SP2 yet? I sure have'nt had time! I'm running Office 2003 Pro everywhere, and at an MS seminar yesterday I was given another copy for my input during the session. Unfortunately, with 2 MS area reps there, they were not able to clear this question up either, so any help IS appreciated.

Regards,

HelpDesk180 / lightft

 

Brief update to JoeHobart -

You tossed a lot out and I WILL try some of it - but I can't get to it until this weekend at the earliest. Just thought I'd let you know I am NOT ignoring all of your suggestions. Thanks.

HelpDesk180 / lightft

 

Hmm. I'm still having a hard time clearly tracking on what exactly is slow.

Walk me thru it, from opening NOTEPAD all the way until the printer starts going and clearly define the deviation from expected behavior.

To save paper, and elminate bidi, network stuff, etc etc from the equasion. I recommend setting up a LJ4 driver printing to a local port. It does not actually need to have a printer connected to the lpt port, just make a phantom printer and pause the queue. If this concept is confusing, then just setup a generic text only print driver, and have it print to whatever printer you can lug into the room.

The test matrix i explained below, some clarity. I am interested only in 'first launch' times. After you collect a single file->print time, close the app, relaunch and retest.

I will be very interested to see the results once you have cleaned the garbage out of your spooler. Alternitivly, if you can setup a lab/test machine repro of a clean install, that would work as well.

 

Hi Joe. Thanks for your suggestions. Here is what I've done so far:

Notepad.exe took 65 sec first time after File-->Print (then on each restart 40,63,64,63,63,64,64 sec). After installing LaserJet4 as default local printer, it took 55,63,63,64 sec, i.e. no change.

Netscape still takes 61 sec, Adobe acrobat 62 sec, IE 2 sec (no change).

With Word, Excel and Powerpoint, the printer selection dialog comes up IMMEDIATELY after clicking File-->Print (< 1 sec).

It doesn't matter which printer is selected or set as default -- same thing happens with these applications. Once a printer has been selected, printing starts within 3 sec of clicking OK with any of them (on both local and network printers).

I'm reluctant to remove all my printer drivers unless I really have to (I work in 3 different locations and have 5 local and 6 network printers installed -- reinstalling each of them one by one would be a real pain). I had a look at cleanspl.exe, but it wanted to 'delete all installed spooler components', so I didn't go ahead.

What do you think? Rob

 

Fix

I have a client that has a duplicate env like yours with XP and W98. We updated to SP2 and had the exact issues with the printer drop down acting slow as molasis.

We did the following and the problem was resolved:
Go into the Security Center, select Windows Firewall. Then choose the Exceptions Tab. Then I had to put a check in Remote Desktop.

That was it. The issue went away. Hope this helps.

 

Glad it works for you!

You might have something here, but I can’t pin it down. I opened Windows firewall, confirmed it was turned OFF, and decided to check Remote Desktop anyway. Closed. Opened MS Word 2003 and a 2-page text doc, then tried to print. I got excited when the print dialog box came up in 2-3 seconds. I can live with that. But it never did it again!

I closed the doc and Word, then reopened Word and tried again "“ back to the usual 10 seconds or so. This is a lot better than the 30 seconds or so that I got immediately following the upgrade to SP2, but is still pretty slow on a fairly fast machine. (2.8 gHz)

Tried again with Windows firewall turned on and off, remote desktop checked and unchecked both ways. I got a range of almost 50% in time, but never real fast again. I am not sure this setting changed anything for me, as I also got about the same range of response times without switching any settings.

Similar, but 2-3 seconds slower response with Notepad, and of course, instantaneous printing with good 'ol Cardfile.

We'll get this sooner or later - Hope we don't have to wait for Longhorn!

Lightft / HelpDesk 180

 

I've Got the Same Printer Dialog Problem

Nice to find this thread and know that I'm not alone!<g>

I'm a C++ programmer, and one of my biggest applications throws a GDI exception when I try a print selection cycle. IOW the printer selection dialog never comes up. On some of my smaller C++ applications, the dialog does come up, but it takes 30 seconds or more!

I've traced the GDI crash to a place in my code where the Windows API call CreateDC() is called. But I'm not sure that this is really the culprit.

I first noticed this on a new development machine I received (a Dell XPS Gen III). My earlier machine was running XP SP1 and didn't have this problem. This PM, I upgraded my older machine to SP2 and now the problem occurs on that machine!

I have another user in my office on a Dell laptop with XP SP2 but he doesn't see this problem!

I've gone so far as to completely disable the Windows firewall, but that still doesn't help my GDI exception problem.

And yes, recent MS applications don't seem to be impacted. But applications like Paint Shop Pro 6 and others show a very long delay before the printer selection dialog appears.

When my GDI exception occurs, and I go into Display settings, I get an error message that the display driver is "old" and can't be used. So I think this is somehow involved with the display driver.

I downloaded the latest driver for both my NVIDIA cards, but that didn't seem to help.

Anyway, it seems like we are all on the track of something "real" and significant!

Best

Harry