Windows 2000 Server as print server

[Service & Support]

we tried to use a Windows 2000 Server as a Printer-Server but had a lot of
trouble with the print spooler service. on the Windows 2000 Server were
about 40 printers configured with perhaps 10 different printer drivers.
because of the crashing print spooler service, which means that about 150
users couldn't print anymore, we decided to use an existing Novell 3.12
Server as the print server. This configuration runs very well and we had no
more print problem, caused by an crashing print spooler service.
Now we want to remove this last Novell Server and also remove the IPX
protocol from our workstations and had to look for an alternate print
server.
To fix the crashing Windows 2000 print spooler service (probably caused due
a badly printer driver) i considered to remove all printer drivers from the
Windows 2000 Server and configure all printers on the server to use the
'generic/text only' driver. the correct printer drivers are installed on all
workstations an testing this configuration with some pcl5/6 and ps printers
had not shown any problems.
However this will not be the same as in a real environment, so i hope that
someone can give me some hints or his own experience of using a Windows 2000
/ 2003 Server as a print server.

Regards

Jan Berndt

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi,

We have a big network with Win2000 print servers running day and night,
and I have never seen the spooler crash. We have mainly HP TCP/IP
network printers with JetDirect cards in them, and use the "Windows
2000" drivers from HP as opposed to the "NT4" drivers (you can use both
under Win2k).

You may want to load up your crashed spooler into a debugger (with
loaded symbols) and investigate what caused the crash.