Print jobs restart for no reason!!!!

Hello All

Can anyone help me at all with this problem???

We have several large capacity printers at our site all set up onto a print server via network ports. Recently we have moved from windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 Server. This is a different machine as well. 2 x 2.8ghz Xeon processors and 2gb of Memory.

We are using two fairly powerful Windows 2000 Professional workstations to spool the print jobs up.

Now the problem that is occurring is that for no apparent reason, on occasion when a print job has been spooled and is printing to the printer, the job will just restart again from Page 1. There are no errors or messages on the Event logs of either Workstation or on the Servers. This is happening on each kind of printer we have (Kyocera, HP, Lanier etc).

At first I thought it could be network traffic but this sometimes happens even when a small job has been spooled to just one printer. I've tried adding extra memory, putting the printers on a different network altogether but still the problem occurs.


Can anybody help????

 

I'm a little confused here. Why are you using 2K Pro (workstation OS) to spool the jobs?

With the workstation OS version having a simultaneous connection limit of 10, I'm not real sure what will happen if one of the PCs thinks it is seeing number 11 trying to connect but I would guess it could cause some issues.

A decent 2K server with spooler service moved off the system drive (Microsoft Kb article gives specifics on doing this), plenty of RAM, and a decent size page file should be able to handle quite a few printers for lots of users without even breaking a sweat. I think we are running around 150 network printers & plotters for several thousand users right now on a single print server.

 

Hi Greeny

We have from time to time seen similary problem here in our datacenter. Are you using std tcp-ip ports - the build-in native raw ip port driver from windows 2000 - or have you installed some of that nasty toy sw from those fancy printers ? I don't know but my impression is that the port drivers delivered with these 200mb huge printer drives might have been tested on som stand-alone single-user single cpu windows xp pc somewhere but not in a server environment where you have multi cpu, multi user and maybe also terminal services enabled. If so would I suggest that you try to use the std. tcp-ip ports instead. It can also be necessary to remove bi-directional support on the driver also - depending on if the printer is located on the same netowrk segment or may be far away via some wan connection with only specific ip ports opened. hope this can help
regards /ti

 

I'm confused too... Why do u spool with 2 2k workstations when u got a w2k server?

Mind u, I've seen that happen. 14 sessions opened on a w2k workstation! yes yes yes... And only 8 comp on the site. Were there some connection pbs? oooh, yes! A mess to sort out. Took us 3 days with 2 boiling minds (my collegue and I) to sort it out. And guess what was opening the extra sessions? Printers!

workstation used "as a server" + network printers = no good.

 

Hello Again

Basically the Windows 2000 server has the printers set up on it locally. these printers are shared. All the printers are network printers that sit on their own network switch attached to one of two network cards on the server. The w2k workstations are connected on a separate network switch that is attached to the second network card on the 2000 server. The workstations connect to the shares set up on the server (so if separate jobs are sent to a particular printer they show up in the same queue).

All the printers, workstations and server were located on the same network. I have separated them recently to see if this would solve the problem however it still exists.

The 5si printers are using JetDriect ports. The other printers are using standard TCP/IP ports (RAW, not LPR)

 

We are using two fairly powerful Windows 2000 Professional workstations to spool the print jobs up

Workstation OS versions (NT4/2K/XP) are limited to 10 simultaneous network connections at any given time. If you try to make an 11th connection, bad things happen.

If you want a machine to act as a server, it needs to be running a server OS.

One 2K server to act as your print server and all the systems (printers & PCs) on the same network is the way to go unless the network is really large or really congested.

If you do want to have 2 networks, use routers. Servers do some things really well. Routing is not among those things.

 

The thing is I never experienced this problem using NT4 workstations spooling through am NT4 server. Its only since we moved onto 2000. And like I satated before, this was still happening when everything was on the same netwok.

 

No idea why it worked with NT4 and blows up sometimes with 2K.

I still think your best bet is to migrage the printing services to a server though and get those workstation systems out of the 'server' business.

Printmig.exe makes the job pretty easy. The article has v2.0 in the title but down the page is a download link to a newer version.

 

i agree with newt, but i wanted to know if youve turned on informational error messages in the Printers->Server Properties_>Advanced tab to make sure your getting all the information.