Extremely slow printing to remote printers

I am having a hard time with a Windows 2000 Small Business Server.
Previously running OK, it has now decided to not like shared network
printers ? local printers work fine and adding a new printer that?s
hosted elsewhere works OK, but when you try and print it takes ages
(tens of minutes) for the print jobs to get to the target printer. If
you try and look at the remote printer queues or printer properties, the
status shows ?opening? for perhaps 5-10 mins before going ?ready? and
then if you click on the printer name it?s perhaps another 5-10 mins
before the queue is shown. The two remote printers are hosted on PCs
running XP Pro.

Things tried so far:

Deleted and re-created printers.

Checked system logs ? no directly-related errors (*but see below)

Tried creating a generic LaserJet 4 printer to confirm it?s not related
to the target printers (which are label printers)

Checked for Trojans and viruses ? nothing showing (AVG, Trojanhunter,
safety.live.com, Sysinternals? TCPView and ProcExp).

No firewalls running on any PC

Changed LAN card on server to another make/model

Reinstalled SP4

Checked for unwanted or suspicious Services

Uninstalled non-critical apps (Left only with MS Office and an in-house
management app that?s working fine on 15 other sites)

*The system logs showed that Modem Sharing was not starting properly,
but as it was not being used I deleted it from the network setup. I
suppose this may indicate a network-related issue but in every other
respect the system runs fine (speed, disk performance, network performance)

*The system logs also report that IPSec is not starting properly due to
unavailable system resources and this is the only anomaly I haven?t been
able to resolve. We are not using IPSec anyway but if anyone can shed
any light on whether this needs to be investigated further I would be
happy to oblige.

The server is a P4 2.8GHz with 768MB RAM and 21GiB free disk space.
Running SQL server and Terminal services for one other PC.

Any advice would be appreciated ? I haven?t checked for a rootkit yet
but if I head in that direction I will probably just go for a complete
reinstall.

Any suggestions folks?

Thanks

Linker3000

Dave
Thu May 11 10:51:05 CDT 2006

This is a tough one IMO because, with the printers shared on XP boxes rather
than dedicated network print servers, you don't really even know if the
problem is on the server or the XP boxes. Do you have any way to print to
connect one of these directly to the LAN to see if that makes a difference?

One thing you can do is to clear out any left over temp files from print
jobs. The folder C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\PRINTERS should be empty unless
jobs are queued, and I'd check it on PCs you're printing from as well as the
XP boxes that host the printers.

Something else you could try is on the XP hosts, go to Printers and Faxes ->
File -> Server Properties and up the logging for the spooler. Note the
current settings so you can put them back after to keep the logs from
filling up with spooler events.

I use a couple of the Dymo USB label printers, and I hook them up to the HP
Jetdirect USB print servers - I think the model number is 175X, which if not
is close enough for you to figure it out. These work great for both the
label printers and a couple of other USB printers that use them in the
conference rooms.


"linker3000" <linker3000@google-minushyphenmail.com> wrote in message
news:44624bd4$0$2584$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk...
>I am having a hard time with a Windows 2000 Small Business Server.
>Previously running OK, it has now decided to not like shared network
>printers ? local printers work fine and adding a new printer that?s hosted
>elsewhere works OK, but when you try and print it takes ages (tens of
>minutes) for the print jobs to get to the target printer. If you try and
>look at the remote printer queues or printer properties, the status shows
>?opening? for perhaps 5-10 mins before going ?ready? and then if you click
>on the printer name it?s perhaps another 5-10 mins before the queue is
>shown. The two remote printers are hosted on PCs running XP Pro.
>
> Things tried so far:
>
> Deleted and re-created printers.
>
> Checked system logs ? no directly-related errors (*but see below)
>
> Tried creating a generic LaserJet 4 printer to confirm it?s not related to
> the target printers (which are label printers)
>
> Checked for Trojans and viruses ? nothing showing (AVG, Trojanhunter,
> safety.live.com, Sysinternals? TCPView and ProcExp).
>
> No firewalls running on any PC
>
> Changed LAN card on server to another make/model
>
> Reinstalled SP4
>
> Checked for unwanted or suspicious Services
>
> Uninstalled non-critical apps (Left only with MS Office and an in-house
> management app that?s working fine on 15 other sites)
>
> *The system logs showed that Modem Sharing was not starting properly, but
> as it was not being used I deleted it from the network setup. I suppose
> this may indicate a network-related issue but in every other respect the
> system runs fine (speed, disk performance, network performance)
>
> *The system logs also report that IPSec is not starting properly due to
> unavailable system resources and this is the only anomaly I haven?t been
> able to resolve. We are not using IPSec anyway but if anyone can shed any
> light on whether this needs to be investigated further I would be happy to
> oblige.
>
> The server is a P4 2.8GHz with 768MB RAM and 21GiB free disk space.
> Running SQL server and Terminal services for one other PC.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated ? I haven?t checked for a rootkit yet but
> if I head in that direction I will probably just go for a complete
> reinstall.
>
> Any suggestions folks?
>
> Thanks
>
> Linker3000
>

linker3000
Tue May 16 16:43:49 CDT 2006

Dave Nickason [SBS MVP] wrote:
> This is a tough one IMO because, with the printers shared on XP boxes rather
> than dedicated network print servers, you don't really even know if the
> problem is on the server or the XP boxes. Do you have any way to print to
> connect one of these directly to the LAN to see if that makes a difference?
>
> One thing you can do is to clear out any left over temp files from print
> jobs. The folder C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\PRINTERS should be empty unless
> jobs are queued, and I'd check it on PCs you're printing from as well as the
> XP boxes that host the printers.
>
> Something else you could try is on the XP hosts, go to Printers and Faxes ->
> File -> Server Properties and up the logging for the spooler. Note the
> current settings so you can put them back after to keep the logs from
> filling up with spooler events.
>
> I use a couple of the Dymo USB label printers, and I hook them up to the HP
> Jetdirect USB print servers - I think the model number is 175X, which if not
> is close enough for you to figure it out. These work great for both the
> label printers and a couple of other USB printers that use them in the
> conference rooms.
>

Thanks for the suggestions.

A quick update for everyone - we tested everything feasible by
substitution (LAN card, network switch, RAM, graphics card) and even
tried a fresh install of SBS 2000 on a spare hard disk and got the same
results.

In the end we shifted the original hard disk into an identical spare
server and the darn thing's working - best first guess is some form of
hardware fault - but if so it's a weird one!

Fortunately the server is under maintenance so I will wash my hands of it!