Windows XP SP3 Printing Problems

[majorg]

Hello,

I work in a Windows 2003 domain environment, and we have 100 Windows XP
clients. Using WSUS we have successfully upgraded a number of the client
PCs, but have now discovered that many have them have developed printing
problems with PDF and Office documents. It is taking about six minutes for
the print dialog window to appear.

As suggested by Microsoft, we have changed the settings for printers on our
Windows 2003 print server so that print jobs are printed directly rather than
spooled, and have done the following on the clients:

1. Click "Start", go to "Run", and type "msconfig" (without the quotation
marks) in the open box to start the System Configuration Utility.
2. Click the "Services" tab, check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box and
click "Disable All" (if it is not gray).
3. Click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and click "OK".

However, these changes have not improved matters.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

I work in a Windows 2003 domain environment, and we have 100 Windows XP

clients. Using WSUS we have successfully upgraded a number of the client
PCs, but have now discovered that many have them have developed printing
problems with PDF and Office documents. It is taking about six minutes for
the print dialog window to appear.

As suggested by Microsoft, we have changed the settings for printers on our
Windows 2003 print server so that print jobs are printed directly rather than
spooled, and have done the following on the clients:

1. Click "Start", go to "Run", and type "msconfig" (without the quotation
marks) in the open box to start the System Configuration Utility.
2. Click the "Services" tab, check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box and
click "Disable All" (if it is not gray).
3. Click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and click "OK".

However, these changes have not improved matters.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Do not, not, not use msconfig. This is the worst advice anyone could
give you or that you could take.

1. Are these HP printers?
2. Is the server at SP2 patch level?

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[majorg]

The problems are occurring with a variety of printers including HP, Canon and
OKI. We used msconfig as per instructions from Microsoft.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

The problems are occurring with a variety of printers including HP, Canon and

OKI. We used msconfig as per instructions from Microsoft.

Nah, msconfig can't help with this. Try the following:

Right-click the printer and do a Properties, click the advanced tab,
click the Print Processor button, ensure the print processor is set to
be Winprint. Default data type is RAW but if your's is different,
leave it or note the setting and set it to RAW. If that doesn't help,
on the same Advanced tab page, uncheck Enable Advanced Printing
Features.

There's been a few post-SP3 patches for XP and post-SP2 patches for
Server that we could explore if the above doesn't help. There's also a
registry tweak we could try as well. Let me know how it goes.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[majorg]

Hello Chicago Wolf,

I've changed the print processor settings on some of our printers, but the
users are still having the same problem. When they click on print, it takes
many minutes for the print dialog box to appear.

We have reformatted a few PCs, put Windows XP with SP2 on, upgraded to SP3,
added Office, Adobe Reader and our bespoke applications, and those PCs have
no printing problems.

Thanks for your help.