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Network Printer Issue

G

gpn43

n00b
Joined
Sep 28, 2012
Messages
14
Hi All,

I am completely baffled by what is going on, on our network. We have four HP C4005 Printers. All of them connected to different switches around the network. About every 1-3 hours they all give the error 49FF09 (which is pretty vague, basically a network connectivity issue). Have to reboot to get rid of the error, then it will work again for an hour or so and give the same error (whether print jobs have been sent or not). This started a few days ago out of no where.

I am starting to think its an issue with the network, because they will all go offline at the same time. If I run a constant ping to them, they will all go offline at the same time and return the error. We use all cisco equipment. If I check the port statuses they all say up 100 full with no errors.

I have tried disabling sleep mode on the printers, turned off multicasting, updated firmware for printer and for jetdirect, and used different drivers. All non solutions so far. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Next step I am going to take one and go directly into a PC to see if the error still occurs, but in the mean time if anyone has a suggestions, it would be appreciated.

Thank you
 
Ah, should have mentioned that I also tried different cables. Also tried different switch ports.
 
Could be a bad switch.

I had an issue with a client that every Wednesday their network would go down at 8:30am...every single Wednesday on the dot. Turned out to be a bad netgear switch...but I don't know for the life of me why it was so precise.

If possible, try to simplify the network to try and narrow it down to a particular switch or particular section of your network. It could be an IP conflict.

Next time it happens, try restarting the switches one at a time to see if restarting a certain one stabilizes your network.
 
Disable every network protocol on the printers except TCP/IP.
NETBEUI? gone.
IPX? gone.
AppleTalk? gone.

Some of the protocols are super chatty and cause problems.
 
As stated above, you do have a lot of protocols enabled? In that case disable everything except TCP/IP, also try to use the Universal PCL drivers as they are by far not as chatty (and annoying) as the model specific ones.
//Danne
 
Are the user's directly connecting?

Is there a printer server involved?

Are the printers showing this messsage?

Are the printers using static IPs or DHCP?
 
Mackintire said:
Are the user's directly connecting?

Is there a printer server involved?

Are the printers showing this messsage?

Are the printers using static IPs or DHCP?
Click to expand...

The protocols other then TCP have been disabled. Yes, they are connected to a print server. I disconnected them all, deleted the ports and drivers, restarted spooler, and then reconnected them. Since I did that, has been fine, but only time will tell. And they all show the message on the panel when it happens and have static addresses.

I will check back tomorrow morning with update on rest of day. Thank you for replies so far.
 
Wait - are they all on print servers, or are they running off a windows box serving them up as "shared printers"?

If it's the latter, I can give you good odds that the problem is coming from the windows box.
 
Innocence said:
Wait - are they all on print servers, or are they running off a windows box serving them up as "shared printers"?

If it's the latter, I can give you good odds that the problem is coming from the windows box.
Click to expand...

There's a huge difference between the two, so please be specific.
 
RocketTech said:
I can't wait to hear this one.
Click to expand...

One is a server role with management and redundancy features....one is a pile of printers installed on a server acting as a host with nothing else added.


One has internal routines to regulate the processing and restarting of the print spooler, one does not.

One support driver redirection, one does not.

One support virtual driver separation, one does not.

One has a unified GUI to support prioritization and print queue management

One supports performance monitoring

Should I go on?
  • Visible driver administration
  • Document Management
  • Print Server Clustering
  • Printer Pooling
  • Higher Device Availability notification
  • Printer Resource Security

One is generally usable in the enterprise, one is the pain in the ars.....that tends to make users think their IT buys expensive crap that never works.
 
Case in point.

When I was hired we had a server that had shared printers...

Printer spooler would break for a user..... 3 hours later someone would say something and I would restart the print spooler on the server and on the client and sometimes restart the printer and it would print out 30 or so jobs. Sometimes it breaks on the client's end, sometimes on the server, sometimes on the printer. We have 11 printers so this occurred fairly regularly....like every other day.


I installed the printer server role....and reconfigured everything. Uptime for the printers jumped about 300%.

After moving to a new fileserver. I enabled location awareness, GPO integration with printer deployment, and updated all the drivers to all the printers on the server with the print server role. Since I had adequate RAM installed I also enabled driver isolation.

After a week of teething pains getting everyone to remove the old printers from their systems.... Printer uptime jumped another 200%. With one great benefit.

With driver isolation enabled a user that sent a screwy print job wouldn t break the printer for anyone else. Perceived uptime is now extremely high with some user's never seeing an issue. Problem users actually have their root problems addressed and we can see issues in the print management console and often resolve them before the end of the day.

If I had known that installing the print service role would have saved me hours of time each month I would have installed it when I was first hired. As it worked out It took me 9 months to get around to installing it and I am a little wiser now for knowing what a difference it can make.

I'm lucky if I have to restart the print server role of the server more than once a month. Usually I only have to click on the job and choose restart. 9 out of 10 times the problem is on the client's end and I rarely see tickets for that issue...maybe 1 or 2 a month. Not too bad for a 250 user company if you ask me.
 
To me it all sounds like bad management/drivers. You can set client computers to spool on the 'shared printers' computer just as you can on the dedicated role server computer.
Servers today have so much computing power (as do the printers themselves) it is pretty wastful, IMO to dedicate a physical server to a dedicated print server role, unless you have thousands of printers. Using a windows server with Print Server tools installed alongside other roles is a perfectly valid and stable configuration. If you feel beeter about dedicating a machine to printing only, I would suggest virtualizing it.
Even local printers connected by USB/Parallel/Serial
to a workstation and shared are pretty reliable. I don't think this is the configuration of the OP, as he stated the printer panel displayed a network error.

Using Xerox's CenterWare or similiar allows central administration or printers, custom driver deployment, print on demand, start/restart print processor/spooler, dynamic queuing of documents, etc- need I go on?

There are many, many, many ways to connect, monitor, manage, and deploy printers. All have their good and bad points, and I am not aware of any common method of printer connection that is inherently unusable.
 
Nowhere did I endorse using a dedicated box. I know mine isn't.

But computing power and spooling is not the only reasons to use the print server role. When I worked for a 30 user company we never had a print server. The question is more along the lines of why wouldn't you use the role? The CPU load is miniscule, the RAM requirement is peanuts.

Sure Xerox Centerware is an option....if you have all Xerox printers. You are correct that there are many ways to solve these issues.
But again... if your not using something like Centerware and have multiple printers and multiple users.. the question again becomes why not?
 
The only inherently unusable example I can think of is a wireless G network attached printer direct connected to with multiple jobs being sent to it via multiple clients......yuck.
 
CenterWare is multi-vendor capable. As an example of why not to use a print server, the question becomes 'Why use a separate print server?' when it is built into every printer and manageable from a console? Options, my friend- learn them, live them, love them.

I'm not here to argue death of a thousand qualifications, just giving an alternative to the bluster.

Different strokes for different folks- there is more than one way to eat an Oreo cookie.
 
Innocence said:
Wait - are they all on print servers, or are they running off a windows box serving them up as "shared printers"?

If it's the latter, I can give you good odds that the problem is coming from the windows box.
Click to expand...

Windows 08r2 print server. We use vmware so yes, its virtualized and is also a file server. Same problem so far today. Moved one of them to a new isolated switch (off of the production network) with PC attached and have had no problems so far, but interface details are unchanged from its previous production port, so not sure if it will eventually throw the error.

They are usable, just a complete inconvenience to power cycle multiple times a day. Had the intern call HP just to get their 2 cents and they want to replace the CF firmware cards on all the printers.... yea, OK.
 
gpn43 said:
Had the intern call HP just to get their 2 cents and they want to replace the CF firmware cards on all the printers.... yea, OK.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be as bad as you think, as long as they are newer printers. I'd do it if it was no cost.
Can you check the maintenance/fault log on the printers? I'm not sure off the top of my head how to get into it on your printers.
Also check the Event Log on the server.
Have you verifed each printer has a unique IP address, hostname, and all network parameters are correct (DNS, Gateway, Subnet, etc)? Also check the time and timezone on the server and each printer, they should be within 20 minutes of each other.
 
RocketTech said:
Shouldn't be as bad as you think, as long as they are newer printers. I'd do it if it was no cost.
Can you check the maintenance/fault log on the printers? I'm not sure off the top of my head how to get into it on your printers.
Also check the Event Log on the server.
Have you verifed each printer has a unique IP address, hostname, and all network parameters are correct (DNS, Gateway, Subnet, etc)? Also check the time and timezone on the server and each printer, they should be within 20 minutes of each other.
Click to expand...

I have verified all network settings are correct. However, I did not check date/time. I just changed it... it was off on all of them. Hopefully that does it. Thanks for all the replies.
 
What switch are you using?

First make sure WDS drivers are not used I know lexmark ones will crash the spooler.

I also had a HP Procurve 2510g that has a malfunctioning modules it would cause printers to.
1. Stop printing randomly.
2. Go offline
3. Spit out Garbage.

HP couldn't find anything wrong with the switch. I told them to send a new one and they did.

Also if they are DHCP make sure your lease time is greater then 3 hours.
 
I would hard set the printers to 100/full then 100/half and see if they're more stable. It would also be interesting to throw another brand or model of printer on that same problem switch and see if it exhibits the same behavior (my guess is it won't).

Since the printers seem fine after you moved them, it seems to be a switch specific issue. Hard set the speed, look for interface errors on the switch, update the f/w on the switch, replace the switch. Those are the things I would do.
 
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