Published printers disapper from AD

[Jason]

I have a recurring problem that is strange. I have 90 published, network
printers on a server that on occation will disappear from the Active
Directory. I have to stop/restart the spooler service on this server and on
a DC in order to get the printers to reappear in the AD search option.

Has any seen this issue before? If so, what is the cause and resolution for
it?

Thanks

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Jason,

I have seen this sort of thing on the WIN2000 workstations. Typically the
user had printed several larger PowerPoint presentations or something from
Adobe Photoshop 5.5. Long story short, there was corruption and this caused
all of the printers that were attached to this workstation ( all networked
printers ) to disappear and the user was prevented from adding any printers
( Domain account was a member of the local computer's Power User group ).
We had to go in to a specific folder and remove the corrupted files and then
restart the spooler service on that machine. Then everything showed up
again. We never had to do anything on the print server or DC and no one
else was affected while this specific user was having this problem.

I realize that we are talking apples and oranges here.

How are the printers set up on the print server? Static IP Addresses? I
presume that this is a dedicated print server? or does it perform other
functions ( like file server as well )? Do you see any event ids? Can you
add a printer via \\servername\sharename eventhough it does not show up in
the search option?

Cary

 

[Jason]

The printers are setup with static IP addresses. The printers are attached
to a central print server/ Exchange 2K server. I do not see any event id
that would point to a problem.

I will have the end user try to add the print in other ways when this
reoccurs.

Thanks.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Jason,

Okay, now we need to figure out why this happens. Do they have any problems
finding other things ( such as user accounts or computer accounts ) or is it
just the printers that they can not find when using Search?

Cary