Slow Printing

[Steve Gould]

I have been on an upgrade cycle replacing older Win 98 laptops with new Win
XP Pro ones. Numerous end users have complained that printing to their older
Ink Jet printers is now extremely slow. Example: A page in Win 98 may take
10 seconds. The same page in XP now takes 30 seconds to print.

I have had them goof with printer spooling settings, but so far haven't
found anything to help. Has anyone else dealt with this type of problem? We
mostly have HP and Lexmark printers.

Steve Gould

 

[Guest]

Steve -
If you are using the printer drivers that shipped with XP,
they have a reputation as being less capable and inferior
to the drivers available from the manufacturer for Windows
XP. I would visit the HP & Lexmark web sites for drivers
for the printers.

Good Luck !

 

[R. McCarty]

Two things to check:

1. The spooling directory
2. The default print priority (Sometimes this value will be
set to a ridiculously low value, like 1)
Printer settings are found for each specific printer at the following
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers]

Look for a sub-key entitled
Default Priority & Priority ( Use Decimal values to increase
the priority value)

 

[Guest]

Thx

-----Original Message-----
Two things to check:

1. The spooling directory
2. The default print priority (Sometimes this value will be
set to a ridiculously low value, like 1)
Printer settings are found for each specific printer at the following
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\
Printers]

Look for a sub-key entitled
Default Priority & Priority ( Use Decimal values to increase
the priority value)

Steve -
If you are using the printer drivers that shipped with XP,
they have a reputation as being less capable and inferior
to the drivers available from the manufacturer for Windows
XP. I would visit the HP & Lexmark web sites for drivers
for the printers.

Good Luck !
but
so far haven't

.

 

[Steve Gould]

For a single user system hooked directly to the printer how would this
affect print speed? I could see if the HD was close to full it might. I
installed the printer on my system (HP 720C) just to check the default
settings. The priority is 1, but would that make printing slower?

Two things to check:

1. The spooling directory
2. The default print priority (Sometimes this value will be
set to a ridiculously low value, like 1)
Printer settings are found for each specific printer at the following
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers]

Look for a sub-key entitled
Default Priority & Priority ( Use Decimal values to increase
the priority value)

Steve -
If you are using the printer drivers that shipped with XP,
they have a reputation as being less capable and inferior
to the drivers available from the manufacturer for Windows
XP. I would visit the HP & Lexmark web sites for drivers
for the printers.

Good Luck !

 

[R. McCarty]

I can only speak from personal experience. I have both a Epson
C82 and a Brother Laser on my home network. With default
priorities, both take a fair amount of time to print. In my case,
I changed the spooling directory to a Ram Drive ( Please, no
postings about using Ram Drives). I also changed the Default
and Priority settings to around 85 (Max 100). I can detect a
noticeable improvement in Spooling and time to complete. The
priority of 1 has always been a mystery. Every printer has that
option buried in it's advanced properties somewhere. I just
went and found those Registry keys to save time stumbling
thru Printer interface applets. I suppose for normal users with
a couple of open applications a queued job wouldn't have to
wait long to process. I guess it's all a matter of how long do
you want to wait for the print job to complete.

For a single user system hooked directly to the printer how would this
affect print speed? I could see if the HD was close to full it might. I
installed the printer on my system (HP 720C) just to check the default
settings. The priority is 1, but would that make printing slower?

Two things to check:

1. The spooling directory
2. The default print priority (Sometimes this value will be
set to a ridiculously low value, like 1)
Printer settings are found for each specific printer at the following
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers]

Look for a sub-key entitled
Default Priority & Priority ( Use Decimal values to increase
the priority value)

Steve -
If you are using the printer drivers that shipped with XP,
they have a reputation as being less capable and inferior
to the drivers available from the manufacturer for Windows
XP. I would visit the HP & Lexmark web sites for drivers
for the printers.

Good Luck !

-----Original Message-----
I have been on an upgrade cycle replacing older Win 98
laptops with new Win
XP Pro ones. Numerous end users have complained that
printing to their older
Ink Jet printers is now extremely slow. Example: A page
in Win 98 may take
10 seconds. The same page in XP now takes 30 seconds to
print.

I have had them goof with printer spooling settings, but
so far haven't
found anything to help. Has anyone else dealt with this
type of problem? We
mostly have HP and Lexmark printers.

Steve Gould


.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I can only speak from personal experience. I have both a Epson
C82 and a Brother Laser on my home network. With default
priorities, both take a fair amount of time to print. In my case,
I changed the spooling directory to a Ram Drive ( Please, no
postings about using Ram Drives).

You say "no postings about using Ram Drives," but I'm going to do
it anyway. Not necessarily to try to convince you to change your
mind, but to dissuade others from following your example.

I can readily believe that spooling to a Ram Drive speeded up the
printing operation for you. But what it also did (unless you have
more RAM than you need) is take away that amount of RAM from
Windows's use, thereby causing it page more, and slow down almost
everything else you do besides printing.

Unless most of what you do on the machine is print from it, I
doubt very much that this would be a good tradeoff for most
people.

 

[R. McCarty]

Ken,

I do a large amount of Audio mastering. My machine has 1.0
Gigabyte of physical Ram. I exclude 128 of that for a Cenatek
RamDrive (Version 1.7) It works very well for me - I wouldn't
recommend it globally - But it does work. The reduction in
Ram from 1.0 Gig to 872 doesn't affect my system at all. The
normal memory usage averages around 140-160 Megabytes.
Except when I'm working with large audio modules using a
program called Adobe Audition.

At the least I would hope you can see that for certain types of
use a RamDrive does have some value.

However to keep peace in the family - I will refrain from any
more mentions of a RamDisk. Unless someone directly asks for
advice about it - Is that agreeable to you.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

Ken,

I do a large amount of Audio mastering. My machine has 1.0
Gigabyte of physical Ram. I exclude 128 of that for a Cenatek
RamDrive (Version 1.7) It works very well for me - I wouldn't
recommend it globally - But it does work. The reduction in
Ram from 1.0 Gig to 872 doesn't affect my system at all.

That's fine. You have enough RAM so that even with 128MB taken
away from Windows, it doesn't hurt you. Note that my comments
below included the phrase "unless you have more RAM than you
need." In your case, you have that extra RAM, and what you're
doing apparently makes sense.

The
normal memory usage averages around 140-160 Megabytes.
Except when I'm working with large audio modules using a
program called Adobe Audition.

At the least I would hope you can see that for certain types of
use a RamDrive does have some value.

Of course I recognize that. Whenever I've posted against using a
ram drive, I try to remember to include a phrase to the effect of
"except for specialized situations." Yours is one; I've heard of
others. But most people don't fall into those specialized
categories, and a ram drive is a mistake for the vast majority of
people running Windows.

My concern in this case was that other people who don't fall into
your specialized situation--those with more typical amounts of
RAM--might take your experience and try to copy it for
themselves, likely with a disastrous impact on overall
performance.

However to keep peace in the family - I will refrain from any
more mentions of a RamDisk. Unless someone directly asks for
advice about it - Is that agreeable to you.

You're asking me almost as if I set the rules here, and have to
give you permission. That's not at all the case. It doesn't have
to be agreeable to me. You are just as free as I am to post your
opinion about ram drives or anything else, whenever you want to.

I would only ask one thing of you (and it's a request, not a
demand): if you post a message like the one I replied to, please
explain that the reason you can profitably use a ram disk is that
you have more RAM than you normally need and can therefore afford
to devote some of it to this purpose without impacting
performance in general. Otherwise you might have people with
256MB trying to copy what you do to speed up your printer, and
shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[R. McCarty]

Point taken - It's easy to forget the myriad configurations out
there and that most XP installs are 256 or less and using a dial
up for the Internet.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

Point taken - It's easy to forget the myriad configurations out
there and that most XP installs are 256 or less and using a dial
up for the Internet.

Great. Thanks for understanding, and thanks for the amicable
exchange of views.