Slow Network Printing on a Corp network

Langly

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
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So this problem has been baffling me for a bit. I have a dept setup that is using 5 networked HP/Dell printers to print contracts for customers. I've got 24 machines sharing these 5 printers.

The issue is, about 5-6 of the people have SLOW print times. Doesn't matter what computer they are on but it takes 1.5 minutes for the printer to spool up and print their document.

SO heres the setup

AD accounts: Every person there is setup exactly the same in AD except the 3 supervisors(who work fine)

Printers: I can have one person print to the printer just fine through our Print Server but one of the affected accounts still goes slow.

Things I've tried:

-Changed the Drivers on the print server
-Reset the spooler service many times
-Wiresharked across the network to see the types of transmission (nada was happening of significance)
-Had users completely nuke all their printers and re-add them.

I'm really at a loss of where to go to troubleshoot this issue. If its something on their AD account... I don't know what it would be. If its something on the network, I dont have access to the switches to check =(

Any help in pointing me in the right direction? (im looking for ideas so I can hopefully find the problem rather than have you guys tell me what is exactly wrong :D )

Thanks all, I've never really dealt with troubleshooting printer problems like this and its new territory for me.
 
Is the printer being shared out from a server..and workstations pulled the printer from the server?
Or was the printer installed directly to each workstation as an IP printer?

Differences in print servers? PCL5, 5e, 6?
 
Is the printer being shared out from a server..and workstations pulled the printer from the server?
Or was the printer installed directly to each workstation as an IP printer?

Differences in print servers? PCL5, 5e, 6?

Printers are shared on a Win 2003 Printserver we have setup.

Using PCL 6

Machines arent directly connected to the printer, they spool to the print server. I haven't tried having them NOT spool and direct print yet
 
i've seen something like this happen when printers were mapped direct as IP ports and the local box had a wrong IP, but since they are both using a print server and you've had them nuke and reinstall printers one or both steps should have fixed that issue.

completely random, but is there any possible way the network has a loop somewhere? kinda sounds like packets get lost for a minute then eventually get there. (random, seriously doubt that's happening)

anything wrong with DNS can and will wreak havoc on an AD domain, strange things seemingly unrelated everywhere.

i'm just grasping at straws now. i'd say the next step would be to create a direct IP port to the printer and try it out.
 
Flipping them to the more standard and more often used PCL5 solve anything?
Particular application that they're using which prints slow? Or does even printing a Word document or even just a Winders print test page take a while?
Temp files blown out on the clients?
At the client, if you go into the printer folder, file drop down menu, print server selection...drivers...tons of old junk drivers to clean out?
 
completely random, but is there any possible way the network has a loop somewhere? kinda sounds like packets get lost for a minute then eventually get there. (random, seriously doubt that's happening)

anything wrong with DNS can and will wreak havoc on an AD domain, strange things seemingly unrelated everywhere.

i'm just grasping at straws now. i'd say the next step would be to create a direct IP port to the printer and try it out.

Im going to look into this as a few of these printers have old DNS entries that may have changed on our DNS servers.

Flipping them to the more standard and more often used PCL5 solve anything?
Particular application that they're using which prints slow? Or does even printing a Word document or even just a Winders print test page take a while?
Temp files blown out on the clients?
At the client, if you go into the printer folder, file drop down menu, print server selection...drivers...tons of old junk drivers to clean out?

Ill try pcl 5 to see if that helps. Its all applications that print slow. Mainly our in house management software.
 
changing to PCL 5 didnt help out unfortunantly. From how we have changed things with the printers on the DNS I'm wondering if that is the issue. I'm going to go check our reservations and how the IPs are setup and go from there. It seems more like a loop in the network than anything. For the heck of it im going to flush the DNS on the client computers
 
if you had routing/switching loops, printing would be the least of your issues.

what happens when you map a IP port directly to the printer and take the print server out of the equation?
 
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