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Slow Printing

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About a week ago, all at one time, all of my desktop, network printers started spooling very slowly. IE click print in Word, takes about 15 seconds to spool 3 pages, locking Word up until it is spooled. There is seemingly no commonality, 2 HP’s, a Dell, etc. Not even all on the same servers or switches, but this all happened at once. Any thoughts?

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restart everything (start with the printers)

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Virus, adware, and spyware free?

Malware can and will slow printer spooling to a crawl on a stand alone PC. Haven’t seen it on a network, but assume it is entirely possible.

Check at least PC thoroughly and see what you find.

Dalton

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It’s slow from every PC on the network kto every desktop printer on the network.

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Hello,

I would look at the spoller directory on the server and eventually delete the files in there.
Another option is to install the printers again and use new drivers.

good luck!

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Already rebuilt all the spoolers and stopped and started the spooler service, no help.

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Check performance on the spooler server by using task manager to make sure that there isn’t a rogue process taking up all the cycles or memory. Check disk space and disk fragmentation on the server too. Try shutting down and restarting the spooler.

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Already rebuilt all the spoolers and stopped and started the spooler service, no help. Disk keeper defrags every 4 hours, and there is 25GB of free space on the drive.

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Sounds like a spooler issue; have you tried moving your print spooler directory to a faster drive on your computer?

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Check print server for worms/viruses. Gaobot flared up thi spast week. Even if your antivirus product is catching and cleaning/quarantining the bug, you may still see your network slow to a crawl. Symantec offers a free Gaobot scanning cleaning tool at their web site.

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As stated in the original question, the printers and users are on different servers and switches. Not a server issue.

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We had weird problems like this caused by the HP printer manager utility on the network. Sometimes we would have to do a cold reset on each printer.

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Rebooted every printer, not a help. Also, as stated, more than one brand of printers…HP, Dells, etc.

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I have a question – are you on a Novell Network? We had a similar problem that was caused by the Netware Client. You had to turn off File caching and everything worked at its normal pace. If not, I would guess adware or a spool problem. Resetting might help. Did you try updating drivers on the printers? I have heard of some weird things happening since some recent updates from Windows. I would sure look at what has updated since you started having the problem, it is possible windows security is not playing nice with the printing.

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Windows 2000 SP 4 server, no Novell.

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Something you may want to try is to print direct to the printer (set up a local tcpip port to the printer). This would tell you if you are dealing with a spooler problem or mal-ware of some sort. If it is a spooler problem you will want to stop the spooler and delete ALL the printer jobs along with ANY *.tmp or ~*.* files on the system.

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Printing from the server to the printers is fine, the problem seems to be sending from the PC to the server.

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We had a similiar problem after the servers were updated to the latest service pack. This was 2 years ago with NT4. The service pack limited the available ports. See KB 179156 to change the registry to enable ports greater than 1024. Worked okay after that. HTH.

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Without knowing more information, just some things to check:
Speed/duplex settings on the servers’ nics. If this is out of whack, packets get mangled and everything is slow. This would affect everything else on those servers too though. Possibly dns problems? Was there a recent patch applied to the workstations? Possibly via Automatic updates that could have hosed something up?

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I do not alow auto update on any work stations. I choose what and when they update and there aren’t any updates that coorispond to the time the problem started. Nothing but print speed is effected, so it is not a network or NIC issue.

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I had a similiar problem last week. One workstation had been turned into a spam relay. It started as a slowdown and eventually took down the file servers due to network timeouts.

Check your switches and look for collisions.

Rick

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This would slow the entire network, not just printing.

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I have some printers running on a old 333MHz server. If the servers boot drive gets low on free space it slows everyone down. You may also want to try restarting the Print Spool Service.

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Already stated above that that was done, and there is plenty of drive space.

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We had a similar problem on our network. We installed a couple of hp business inkjets 1100 and 1200 and these printers brought the network printing to it’s knees. We had to remove these printers from the network and then everything was fine. Try removing the last printer or two that you installed on your print server.

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No new printers added in recent history.

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If all of your spooler tests come up dry, check to see if any of your client NIC’s are spewing packets(broadcast storm) on the network. This would slow everything down.

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As already stated, several times, only printing to desktop network printers is slow. Nothing else.

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Try installing Ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com/) on a laptop and determine if the network is to blame. IF your sniff comes out clean try installing SNORT (http://www.snort.org/) with bleeding edge signatures (http://www.bleedingsnort.com/).

If printing from the server to the printers is fine, check the server for IPsec or desktop firewall rules that might be blocking the PC’s from connecting. Try bringing up a new print server and see if the clients can print via the new server. Can you use LPR to print directly to the printer from a workstation (http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/dsss/docs/print-lpr.shtml)?

The common problem appears to be the client?s connection to the server. Is the server free from virus/sypware, are the NIC drivers current (maybe roll back to older drivers), does reinstalled the printer on the client side help?

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There is no print server involved and, once again, network access is not an issue. The issue seems to be writing to the spoolers on the servers, the spoolers output to the printer is fine. If IPsec or NIC drivers were the problem, EVERYTHING on the servers would be slow, not just printing.

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I know you dont see a common network related thread but take a look at your server and desktop system performance counters, esp network errors / retrys. Ive had this happen a few times where a NIC was incorrectly configured or whent bad and causing too many ethernet collisions. You should also check routers for excessive retry events along with disks for spooling.

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You state that there are no print servers, then refer to them not being on the same servers. Are these desktop printers shared and directly attached to workstations or a server? Or truly a network printer with a nic? Have you powered down the switches?

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They are shared printers on the network some with internal nics, some with jet direct, spooled through 2 different servers. All printers have been rebooted, those with jet directs have also been reset.

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Sounds like you have been directed mainly in looking for a virus. I suspect it is a bug but not a virus. Check the size of the output file to be printed. We had this when we went to Windows 2000 Pro and/or Outlook 2000. Been so long I am not sure which one caused the problem. We are trying to remember if it was word documents or PDF files that experienced the problem. Unfortunately we have forgotten what we did to resolve it. Look on TechNet. Wish I could be of more help, will try to go back historically to find what we did.

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Given that you have already dismissed the answer I provided (without reading others already given), I still think this sounds like a NIC or network issue. Collision problems still allow traffic and may not apparently slow other types of traffic. Review your performance counters on the servers and routers.

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I didn’t even respond or rate your 1st answer.

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If the printers are printing through a print-server (set up as local printers on a server via ip address), you might have a corrupted print spooler. We tried updating all of the drivers and that didn’t help, but when we replicated the printers to another server via the printer migration wizard, they were straightened out.

If your printers are set up via ip to print directly to the printer (no spooling on any server), I’d start with drivers and firmware. Most printer mfr’s offer firmware updates to their printers.

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Check other software programs that have been recently installed/upgraded. I read awhile back that certain versions of ACT! would cause flooding of the network.

Or maybe your printers are yakking with each other or some central management software too much.

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I noticed that about a week ago you also had a problem/question about regedit.exe on boot up. Did you take any actions to correct the one problem that may have caused the current printer problem?

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Totaly unrelated. That question is on my home system.

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Have you tried turning off all printers, then bringing them up one (and only one) at a time to see if any of them act differently?

Also, we have had repeated problems (but not this specific one) due to HP memory-resident programs installed when printer drivers are installed or refreshed. HPPROPTY.EXE comes to mind as a particularly troublesome one.

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Point value changed by question poster.

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I would try TCPIP printing. Having everything going through your servers is enough to slow down any network.

Good Luck

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network protocols…did you in recent history add netbeui, or add a different network protocols?

Also, try pinging your printers with the -t switch for about 5 minutes, and watch to see if they go crazy when you print something to them. This should be helpful.

Also, check to make sure that you have a password assigned to the jetdirects…i mean telnet into them and check to see if someone is acting the fool on your network.

Did you recently add any networking equipment? Routers, programmable switches? I would try to do a tracert from one segment to a printer on a different segment. The ping reply shouldn’t be more than 10ms.

Check the logs on the print servers…you could be experiencing the “grim ping” where hackers have found a way to DDoS your printers (highly unlikely, but I was recently hit by grim ping). If you see anything with a-z then gpuser@home.com…then you need to lockup that firewall. an example would be agpuser@home.com.

What a user a few posts up suggested is a cold boot…this is different from merely cycling the power on the printer…this will flush all of the settings that the jetdirect card has stored…but it fixes ALOT of problems. On the HP’s the combination is *usually* power down the printer, hold the go button down while powering it back up. If that doesn’t do it (it should say cold reset on the lcd) check the manual for a cold reset.

Good luck 🙂

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Check the following link: http://www.resortdata.com/Customers/Knowledge/KB-DOS/K000036.htm you may also want to check the space on root drive of your server or change the spooler location.

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Although viruses have been mentioned, no one has mentioned antivirus software. A major cause of spooler slowness or problems that I’ve encountered is caused by the fact that the antivirus real-time or auto protection (whatever your antivirus software provider calls the module that scans files as they are being opened and read or written) is scanning the spooler files, both as they are spooled and as they are printed. It is advisable to exclude the \%systemroot%\system32\spool folder from any antivirus real time scanning on all of the workstations and servers, regardless of whether they are acting as print servers or not.

Hope this helps!

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I can tell you it’s one of the software modules JETDIRECT installs.
I had this problem in 1998 at Quantum, when I was a Sr. System Admin there.
I’ve forgotten the exact module name, but it was one of the programs JetDirect installed, and I believe it was a “.dll” if my memory is correct. I just can’t quite remember the name.
Once deleted, all printing times return to normal.
It had to do with the number of people using the printers, users IP changing, IP addresses of the printers changed occasionally, and finally there was some small “straw that broke the camel’s back” incident that caused the dominos to fall.
The JetDirect SW module retains old info, you see, and continues to contact or find previously known printers even tho they’re not there.
Wish I could remember more, hope this helps.
It was the problem at my shop.

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I have seen background printing in Word to really mess up network spooled printing. Be sure that you turn off background printing on your workstations. Think about it… It is a spooler spooling to another spooler. Not very efficient. I never use background printing when using an intermediate print serving host (like Windows or Netware… doesn’t matter!)

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win2k/xp:

1st: Try restarting the PRINT SPOOLER service only. THere is a common problem, start with restarting that service only.

2nd: Check for the SPYWARE.

3rd: check for services that should not be started and might be clogging your CPU usage(task mgr)

4th: Try msconfig and see what is being loaded and what mysterious things are NOW being loaded. REmove those not needed or suspicious.

After you’ve done all that and cleaned everything, then restart whole machine

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Assuming that your printing from the same PC, I have the following suggestions:

First, check printer drivers for updates.
Second, check your free space on the PC. If you’re working with FAT or FAT32, consider converting to NTFS.
Third, check your file fragmentation percentage. If it’s 15% or higher, defrag immediately.
Fourth, for a general performance boost, set the swap/page file size to 2x physical memory for minimum and max amounts. This provides enough room and saves the system from using resources to manage and resize it.

That’s all I can think of. Hope this helps.

Lloyd in NYC

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How about getting a print server hardware so that you can maximize network performance, use EtherFast? 3-Port 10/100 PrintServer, or search in the web that fit your needs.

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As mentioned by someone- use the printmig utility to migrate queues to another box- at least do the back up to see if anything fails- You can restore everything on another box and compare performance.

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Are you using PS drivers or PCL? For instance i have seen when you print a PDF document to a PCL printer driver it can/will take ages to spool the document. Whereas if you print the same PDF to a PS printer driver, it goes in a flash.

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Sounds like most of the obvious solutions have been suggested. Assuming that nothing has materially changed on your network and you don’t have a virus, malware, spyware, corrupted drivers for nics and all of the other unlikely solutions that have worked at one time or another for people with printing problems. Do you use any jet direct management software? I think the latest version from HP is a web based solution that lets you browse all of the connected printers. Lexmark (marknet) software also has similar functionality. The reason I ask about this is. For the printers with network cards, can you browse to them and actually observe the progress of the print job. I’m not sure what the solution would be without “playing” with your printing network for a few minutes. But I would attempt to see if the problem is with the print server on the Network cards or with the print spooler on each network PC. for the printers without nics or jetdirect/marknet cards. It would appear to be something wrong with the spooler on the PC. But I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in most of the answers I’ve read so far, or even my answer. If it was my network… I would build a clean PC from scratch and install one of the printers on it and see if it then works. Sometimes a straight forward solution works the best. But from my experience, printing issues like the one you’ve described won’t have a real easy solution. Its going to be a trial and error approach till something works.

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Thank you all for all of the suggestions. I had either already tried, or did try, the ideas, unfortunately without resolution. If I ultimately narrow down the problem, and solve it, I will post the resolution.

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This ended up to be McAfee virus shield scanning all print jobs, slowing them down.

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