Printing problem - need to restart print spooler service

[Sleb]

Hi,

I am out of ideas. Here is my problem;

On a windows 2003 which is the only server on the network, all the tcp/ip
printers are installed on it. All printers on the workstation are installed
from the server. What happens is that on the hp laserjet 2200, print jobs are
staying in the queue and the printer shows offline on the server (happens
from time to time). When this happens;

- I can ping the printer without problem
- I can go into the GUI of the printer, don't see no errors
- All other printers are fine (so users can print on all other printers
except this one)
- I have to restart the print spooler service on the server. When I do that,
all print jobs are printed on the problematic printer

What I've tried;

- make printer offline/online
- change driver
- create a script that restarts the print spooler service every morning
- excluded the spool directory from the anti-virus

All of this did nothing, I still have the problem and can occur anytime
randomly. All printers are on hp jet directs. The jet direct that has the
problem printer also has another printer on another port which works fine
even when the problem printer goes offline.

My guess is that if the problem was on the printer or the jet direct,
restarting the print spooler service would not solve the problem temporarily.

Any ideas on things I could try?

Thanks

[Meinolf Weber]

Did you use the latest drivers from HP for 2003? And did you check that also
the drivers for your workstation operating system are installed?

[Sleb]

I have not checked this. What I will do is installed the latest 2003 printer
driver on the server and the latest xp one on the workstation. I'm pretty
sure it will not do anything but it's worth a try. I'll keep in touch of the
developements probably next week.

Thanks for the tip.

[mng70]

We have recently moved from one Windows 2003 domain to a new one including new subnets etc. Since then one of our HP LaserJet 2600n printers is causing us no end of problems. If you log in as an administrator the prints go through without issue. However, log on as a user and the job just sits in the spool queue. the only way to get the job to print is to restart the spooler service on the server. I have granted full rights to everyone to the spool file location on the server and the latest device drivers have been installed, of which get pushed down to the clients upon logon. The users are also local administrators.

I've recently upgraded the printers firmware to the latest but we're still having the problem.

Any ideas?

[Sleb]

Here is more info. I have installed to one of the user the same printer but
directly through tcp/ip instead of going through the server and when the
problem appears, the user can print on the one configurerd directly through
network.

Instead of putting more hours into this problem, what we did is to give a
script to one of the user over there that restarts the print spooler of the
server from her machine. Since this happens only about once a week, the
client didn't want to pay for more hours for that tiny problem.

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

Try out some of the post-SP2 patches mentioned in this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934885
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946198
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944203
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937193

Also, check out the info in this article as well:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947477

What about SpoolerPriority? Set to default 0 or high priority 1?

[bubbrubb]

We were experiencing the same problem with an HP Color Laserjet 2600n. The only users that were able to print were Domain Administrators. We found that when we unchecked the "Enable bidirectional support" option on the Ports tab in properties for this printer, all users were able to print. Hope this helps.

[canarie89]

On some printers, under Win 2003, the problem is on the "SNMP status enabled" on the port properties.

Try to disable the SNMP and verify if this fixup the problem (normally the printers that is offline go to ready status immediately).

[Shabbir]

Dear Friends,

I have one Client PC with windows XP SP2. On which we configure 3 Printer from them one is HP Color LaserJet 4700n. When we print any document one this printer it stuck and showing that the document is in queue until we restart the spooler service. But for the rest printers its works fine. This happen any time. Some time its work fine but often I face this problem.

And when I tried to ping that printer I am getting reply.

For this I tried several steps like reinstall the printer latest driver. Remove a printer and install from fresh installation. I also create one batch file to refresh the spooler service. But these all steps works for only some time and problem remain same. So please help me to resolve it.

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

Disable Bidirectional on the ports tab of the print properties. The
language monitor for the device is requiring a resource which is only
available to system or admins (this is why the jobs print after restarting
the spooler).

Is this connected to a TCP port or USB?

[taliesin1077]

This worked!!!

The weird thing on my end is that it magically stopped working at some point late last week, and I really have no idea why.

Will disabling bidirectional printing support cause any other problems? Why is this something that is enabled by default? Is this an issue caused by a driver, or something within Windows?

[lifer]

I tried the SNMP trick and that did not work. I went back to check on the Bidirectional support and the box was empty and it was also dithered out so that I couldn't change it if I needed to.

I hate to bring this back up, but I am struggling with it. HELP!!

[monsitj]

I tried the SNMP trick and that did not work. I went back to check on the Bidirectional support and the box was empty and it was also dithered out so that I couldn't change it if I needed to.

I hate to bring this back up, but I am struggling with it. HELP!!

If you are looking to start the Print Spooler Service in your system then go with the below given instruction which is having the description for starting the same. I hope this will work with the issue of yours.

• Click on Start Button
• Select Control Panel
• Double Click on System and Maintenance
• Double Click on Administrative Tools
• Double Click Services
• Right Click on Print Spooler service
• Select Properties
• On the General tab, next to Startup type, make sure that Automatic is selected.
• Click Start under the service if it is not working