Network Printing Very Slow

I am using an HP 2200 printer on my home network - 3 PCs all running XP
Home.
The printer was networked and working fine until I had to change things
about a bit at home. I was temporaliy using the HP as a local USB printer
for a few days whilst I was getting the ethernet cabling sorted to my new
office. Once that was finished I reconnected it as a network printer again.

Problem is that now printing is taking 10-20 mins, even though I can access
the web-based admin interface on the printer no problem. I have noticed
though that after printing svchost service is hogging memory resources until
the print job completes.

Computer is 2.8GHx Celeron with 896Mb RAM, so RAM shouldn't be an issue.

Any ideas?

One common error I see is the use of a proxy, (kind of 'by accident' while
adjusting other things) It couldn't hurt to take a look at IE, Tools menu,
Options, Connection tab, "Lan Settings" button.

is the printer still hooked up to your computer with USB? Cause it sounds
like all of your computers are seeing the printer under your computer, not
your routers.

Thanks. As it happens I do use a proxy server to access the internet from
this computer, however I have set the LAN options to bypass the proxy server
for local addresses, which I have specified in the form 192.168.0.* as all
my local IP addresses fall in that range.

Unfortunately that doesn't help. My instinct is that the problem has to do
with TCP/IP settings.

Looking forward to some help please.

[blueglacia]

I have finally found a solution to extremely slow network printer problems which had me baffled for weeks. My network printers (Brother MFC-8890DW) had suddenly become excruciatingly slow to the point of almost unresponsive. It took a few minutes to 30 minutes to print any single page, if at all. I was also having the same problem at my office with some of the network printers (Brother MFC-8660DN and Brother MFC-8460N). Other network printers such as Xerox Phaser 8560 and Canon MP990 were not affected.

I had read everything on the internet and tried all of them without success. Finally, I took my laptop and the printer to a neighbor and plugged in both to his network to see if the network would make any difference. Sure enough, IT DID! It was working just fine spitting out pages promptly at high speed. I noticed that he was using an older D-Link router while I was running a D-Link DIR-655. I came home and started going through router settings to turn off all optional settings one at a time while checking to see if the printer would respond by sending a test page after each change in the router settings.

When I finally got to Advanced DNS Service (Optional, under internet settings) and turned it OFF, my network printer suddenly started working perfectly!!!

I then started turning on other router settings which I turned off earlier, again testing the printer after each change. In my case, Advanced DNS Service was the only service I needed to turn off. All other optional features such as QoS Engine, SPI (stateful packet inspection, in the firewall settings), Anti-Spoof checking, and UPnP did not block the printer even when they were all turned ON.

If you have exhausted all other options, you might want to take a deeper look into your router settings.

[Eric-of-The-Sun]

Now THAT's the solution I was seeking to solve my print jobs taking 2-3 mins to start on my routered network printer!! Thank you so much. In my Linksys/Cisco router, I didn't have that specific "Advanced DNS" option. But I could solve that block using the "Port Routing" service to forward the SNMP port (printers status's protocol), and IT WORKED!! My new print jobs suddenly went instantly from the computer to the printer and started right away.

Just to help you guys seeking help: the spooler was indicating a print job was uploaded 126Kb/525Kb and always kept stuck there for 2-3 minutes before completing rapidly right after. If you have that same problem, it's that device management protocol, the SNMP, being slowed down by the router. It usually passes thourgh port 161 and tells the computer it's "Ready" or "Warming" or "Printing". Since it's blocked, symptoms are your network printer won't update it's status quickly when you turn it on, or off, or when it's still warming up.

Printer: Xerox Tektronix Phaser 740, plugged into router via RJ-45 cable.

Thanks a LOT, blueglacia!!

[nobraner]

Slow Network Printing -- Answer

While there are a number of equipment & network tweeks that will seemingly "solve" this problem, a large majority of these incidents are caused by one simple error.

If you have some device on your network that is acting as the DHCP server and this device has a range of IP addresses that it assigns, make sure that your print server has not been MANUALLY assigned an IP address in that range.

Either set the printer server to automatically receive an IP address or MANUALLY assign an IP address outside the DHCP servers assigned range.