Hi there folks.
For some weird reason we’re having a problem with our printers. When trying to print, randomly (no matter what printer or which user) the printer goes offline on the user’s computer. Then you would have to right click the printer and tell it to go back online, and then it prints the print job that was sent with no problem.
Let me give you some back ground on your network and printers. We are a 200 node network running windows 98 (i know i know, were going to 2000 pro soon, cut us some slack) with a large variety of printers. We have networked RICOH, Xerox and HP printers. The printers without network cards in them are connected to the network via INTEL NETPORT connections.
First we thought it was the printer server (which is also our BDC). It was working fine for quite a long time. We would only stop and start the spooler service and that would clear up any hook ups.
That NT 4.0 server ran for like 5 months without a reset.
Then the offline-online problem began. At that time the printer server was acting weird. IEXPLORER.EXE would come back with errors and there would be random freezes. We decided it was time to start anew.
Thats what we did. Took another computer, installed NT 4.0 server, and all the printers EXACLTY like the old server and put that on the network replacing the old print server.
Still no change. We’re stumped and its driving us BATTY. We tried using network monitor but that really didnt take us anywhere. Any ideas? What can we use to trouble shoot something like this? We keep banging out head against the wall and we haven’t even cracked it yet 🙂
thanks!
-Ginel Lipan
Jr. Net Admin