Frequently Hung Print Jobs

[jokes54321]

We have a print server (Windows 2000 Server) managing 90+ IP Printers using
the Windows Standard TCP/IP Port monitor. Nearly half of these printers are
Epson TM-T88III Point of Sale receipt printers.

Frequently the print jobs to one printer start hanging up and the only way
to recover is to bounce the spooler on the server.

This is becoming a major problem because we have a customer standing there
in front of us waiting for their receipt, and in the off hours, a tech
support person must be paged to bounce the spooler. Sometimes they have to
wait up to 30 minutes before someone can respond to the page.

Another problem is if another user is printing a 200 page document to their
HP LaserJet and the spooler is bounced in the middle of it, the job starts
over.

What can I do? Does someone make a more robust spooler that allows resetting
individual devices verses the entire spooler? Is there a better port monitor
that can recover from these types of errors?

When customers are involved this is unacceptable. A co-worker told me to
migrate them over to a Linux print server. I'm not a big Linux fan but if
this will solve it, I will make it happen.

 

[Christoph Lindemann]

Hi jokes54321,

I have seen this problem several times, with some old printer drivers. Try
installing the latest drivers. Take a look in the event log, are there any
error prints?
If the printers are network attached, a small "hack" is to enable printer
pooling, and then create several ports which point to the same printer, and
attach these ports to the driver/printer. That way, if one port blocks, the
printing can continue on another port. But you would ofcourse still need to
reset the spooler sometimes soon.

/christoph

 

[jokes54321]

Hi Christoph,

That certainly is an interesting work around. I'm not convenienced the
problem is driver related, but more of an issue with the Standard TCP/IP
Port monitor failing to detect the hangup and doing something about it.

I was hoping there was some registry tweaks I could make to force the Port
Monitor to reset or timeout and retry or something to that effect.

Yesterday I asked a buddy of mine about this and he said he's ran into this
issues many times with his clients. His solution was to implement a
Unix/Linux based print server using LPD/LPR. He said I could try installing
the Unix Print Provider for Windows 2000 and see if that works.

I think for now I will try your workaround to at least keep things running.

Thank you,

 

[Christoph Lindemann]

That certainly is an interesting work around. I'm not convenienced the
problem is driver related, but more of an issue with the Standard TCP/IP
Port monitor failing to detect the hangup and doing something about it.

It really can be caused by some older faulty printer drivers.

An other cause might be the standard TCP monitor. To update the printer
status, the monitor loops through all ports, and sends a SNMP query to each
port/printer. If some printers are offline, the query has to timeout before
the next printer is queried. So if you have 120 ports, and 30 specify some
old offline or obsolete network addresses, it has to timeout 30 before
completing 1 loop.
And this might have an impact.

You could also try disabling the language monitor used with a printer driver
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;888206)

He said I could try installing the Unix Print Provider for Windows 2000
and see if that works.

That would not help any. As it only would make windows provide an LPR
interface for others to submit print jobs through.