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Loss of printers

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by ddavis

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I have a PII running WIN98SE with 128MB RAM. Frequently when running MAS90 and trying to print, the printer will stop working. If I go into the Printers folder, all three installed printers are gone. If I reboot the system the installed printers re-appear and the user can once again print from the MAS90 application; that is, until they disappear again. Sometimes the user can go all day without this problem and somedays the problem will occur several times. What's happening and how can I solve the problem?

5 replies

by shmaltz

The reason for that is: There is a task in windows that is responsible for printing its called spooler. In windows NT or 2000 you can just stop and restart this service In windows 9x however it is not so easy to control this. When this task freezes for whatever reason all of your printers will dissapear. When you restart since it stops the spooler it will reapear. I don't remember if windows9x has a way to stop the spooler when you want (however windowsNT/2k does have in the service tab, another reason to use winNT/2K). But if you hit CTR + ALT + DEL you should be able to shut down everything exept explorer and systray (and anything else you know what it is) that way you might be able to force the spooler to restart without reatrting Windows.

by ddavis

I appreciate your answer. For whatever reason I did not receive your response directly, it went to TechRepublic and I did not see it until a month later when TechRepublic notified me I had responses I had not acknowledged. Their notification included two responses of which yours was one.

This is my initial use of the TechRepublic tech questions/answers service. I suspect I will have to take time to learn how to use it properly when time allows. I manage a small (30 wksta, 1 SBS2000 server, 1 WIN2K member server) network. Over the last 6 weeks I upgraded a WIN2K server to SBS2000, went live/hot on 2/11. So, as you could guess my plate has been full.

I just last week had time to try the suggested solution to my problem.

Your answer gave good reasons for the behavior I experienced but, really did not offer a solution.

The second answer I received suggested a removal of all printers and then a reinstall, making sure that I elected to overwrite the existing printer drivers. Iimplemented that suggestion almost two weeks ago and, thus far have not had any printer problems on that PC. I guess I'll call that a solution.

Thanks for your help,

Dick Davis
Jif-Pak Manufacturing, Inc.
760-597-2665

by pdpjp

I have seen this happen at work many times. Remove all your printers and restart the PC. Next reinstall all the printers, but make sure that you elect to overwrite the existing drivers.

by ddavis

I appreciate your answer. For whatever reason I did not receive your response directly, it went to TechRepublic and I did not see it until a month later when TechRepublic notified me I had responses I had not acknowledged. Their notification included two responses of which yours was one.

This is my initial use of the TechRepublic tech questions/answers service. I suspect I will have to take time to learn how to use it properly when time allows. I manage a small (30 wksta, 1 SBS2000 server,1 WIN2K member server) network. Over the last 6 weeks I upgraded a WIN2K server to SBS2000, went live/hot on 2/11. So, as you could guess my plate has been full.

I just last week had time to try the suggested solution to my problem.

Your solution seems to have solved the problem. While somewhat obvious, I had not tried it until you suggested. Two weeks have now passed without a re-occurance of the problem.

Thanks for your help,

Dick Davis
Jif-Pak Manufacturing, Inc.
760-597-2665

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