shared printer stopped sharing

[Dave Claxon]

We have a small network, with 1 SBS 2003 R2 server and a dozen XP Pro SP3
workstations, and several printers being shared by the local workstations
they are plugged into. All was working fine for a long time until last week,
two of the shared printers no longer respond to print jobs from remote
workstations. I have uninstalled and reinstalledseveral times, and even
carried the printer to another room and plugged it into a different
computer, but with the same results. The printer installs just fine, and
prints OK from the host computer, and even shows up in the directory on the
network. But when trying to install network print with "AddPrinter" Wizard,
and select the printer from the directory list, I get "Windows cannot
connect to the Printer. Either the name was typed incorrectly, or the
printer has lost its connection to the server." And this is after selecting
from the list and nothing was typed. I have changed the printer name on the
host computer and the new name shows up in the directory, so I know the
network is seeing it, and it still prints fine from the host. No errors are
showing up in the event viewer, either on the host or remote workstations,
(or the SBS server either,) and I don't believe anything has been changed
recently.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Sounds like the printers which are not sharing themselves are suffering from
too many connections. If attached to XP Pro PCs, 10 simultaneous
connections is the maximum.

Connect the printers direct to the network or to the SBS 2003 Server (49
simultaneous connections allowed from SBS 2003).

 

[zach2825]

I am currently having the same problem I am able to fix it tempararly by typing
ipconfig /flushdns
then ipconfig /registerdns
into the command line that usually fixes it by it self sometime i have to restart the computer then it works but then on the weekend it stops working again...