[OPLINTECH] Print server issues

Fri Aug 26 11:11:12 EDT 2011

Most people think that computers are logical and you need to think 
logically to fix them. While that may be true to some degree, it's 
equally important to be able to think abstractly. This was a great 
example of that. You apparently had a print server problem, but in 
reality it was a networking problem.

Glad you figured it out!

BTW, you mentioned Internet speed was "top notch" on the server. The 
speed of your Internet access is only a small fraction of the speed of 
your local network. If your NIC was functioning, but slow because of, 
say, an increase in dropped/corrupted packets, you would be much more 
likely to notice it locally versus  to/from the Internet. That would be 
even more pronounced if you had something like a receive buffer 
corruption in the NIC driver. A low-speed download from the Internet 
might make very, very little use of the buffer because the system would 
be able to easily keep up with the flow of data. A high-speed 
transmission across your local 100/1000MB network would increase the 
likeliness of needing that receive buffer.     ...Just a couple of 
scenarios to maybe explain why you had top notch downloads from the 
Internet...to put your mind at ease!

______________________________
*Chad Neeper*
Senior Systems Engineer

*Level 9 Networks*
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

/Full LAN/WAN consulting services -- Specialized in libraries and schools/

On 8/25/2011 10:29 PM, Josh Proffit wrote:
>   I really appreciate all the feedback from everyone, you've all given great ideas and I'm glad that we all seem to think along the same lines. And so...through the process of elimination, the problem has been solved. It was an issue at all workstations with any printer hosted by that print server...which helped point the finger at the server.
>
> Printing a PDF from Office from a work station resulted in the same problem with the bloated PDF files in the spool. Printing direct from work stations to the printer was OK. As I mentioned before, office documents printed just fine but then again, they don't typically get as large as PDFs. However, printing a PDF directly from the server was super fast...that raised an eyebrow. Then as I was attempting to move a file from a share on another server to the desktop of the print server, I noticed it was incredibly slow as well...other eyebrow raised.
>
> Now here is an even weirder bit, Internet speed was top notch on the server when downloading a driver from a website, but I decided to investigate the NIC just because at this point I had ran out of anything else to blame...after coming up empty handed (honestly, I had nothing showing fault with the NIC) I decided to uninstall the NIC driver anyway and then reinstall in in device manager. The internet gods as my witness, it cured it instantly. Everything is working fine now?? I downloaded the latest NIC driver from Dell and installed it to be on the safe side but...what? You ever fix something -and happy its working- but you're just not sure what you just did to fix it? It'll be interesting to see how long this "fix" lasts but, so far so good.
>
> Joshua Proffit
> System Administrator
> Head of Information Technology Services
> Licking County Library
> 101 West Main Street
> Newark, Ohio 43055
> 740-349-5586
> jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info<mailto:jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info>
> ________________________________
> From: oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org [oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org] on behalf of Chad Neeper [cneeper at level9networks.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 4:55 PM
> To: oplintech at lists.oplin.org
> Subject: Re: [OPLINTECH] Print server issues
>
> Josh -- When I have a problem like this, I try to cut the problem in half...then cut in half again...repeating until I've hit the source of the problem.
>
> I don't know what you've done so far to diagnose the problem, but applied to your issue as a first step, you might consider trying to determine whether the issue is with the server or the workstation. You might go about determining this by finding out if you have the same "slow pdf print" symptoms when printing from multiple workstations. Presumably you do, which might appear to point the finger towards your server. You can go further to solidify this diagnosis by perhaps changing your test a little and ensure that you are sending the pdf file to the print queue via different programs. If you're printing from Adobe Reader, then try printing your pdf file using another program, say MS Office, if it will open pdf files. Or perhaps another PDF-specific viewer such as Tracker PDF XChange Viewer (http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer) might be more appropriate. (I happen to use/like this one better than Adobe Reader on my own computer.) It's entirely possible
>   that the problem actually has nothing to do with your server, but is actually a recent update on the workstations that is causing the problem... (Hence the "cutting the problem in half" to figure out where you should really be looking.)
>
> You could further eliminate workstations by performing additional test directly on the server itself. Does printing pdf files from the print server still result in slow printing, while other formats are normal? Even on the server, you still need to eliminate the software as a factor (Adobe vs. something else, if you're standard test is to print from Adobe Reader).
>
> The more things you can eliminate, the better you can focus your search. If you can eliminate workstations, you can focus on the server. If you're focused on the server and you can eliminate the pdf viewing software, you can then confidently focus on just the print system...etc. In my personal experience, starting broad and continually cutting the problem in half tends to result in the fastest solution when you're stuck.
>
>
> Just a prediction for the fun of it:  Based solely on what you said in your OP, the first thing that comes to mind is that the problem is with Adobe Reader and not your print server. (Naturally, I have very little to base that on!)
>
> HTH,
> Chad
>
> ______________________________
> Chad Neeper
> Senior Systems Engineer
>
> Level 9 Networks
> 740-548-8070 (voice)
> 866-214-6607 (fax)
>
> Full LAN/WAN consulting services -- Specialized in libraries and schools
>
> On 8/25/2011 12:14 PM, Josh Proffit wrote:
>
> Thanks for the responses, but I've tried both of those options as well. I changed the spool location to a different partition, restarted the service and it made no difference. It's gonna be a long day...
>
> Joshua Proffit
> System Administrator
> Head of Information Technology Services
> Licking County Library
> 101 West Main Street
> Newark, Ohio 43055
> 740-349-5586
> jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info<mailto:jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org<mailto:oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org>  [mailto:oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org] On Behalf Of Ron Woods
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 12:05 PM
> To: oplintech at oplin.org<mailto:oplintech at oplin.org>
> Subject: Re: [OPLINTECH] Print server issues
>
> Have you tried stopping and restarting the spooler service?
>
> Also you could try to use the "Advanced Tab" of the Printer properties on Server 2003 and change the location of the Print Spool..perhaps its corrupted somehow?
>
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc736979%28WS.10%29.aspx
>
> If restarting the service doesn't work, moving the print spool may fix the issue for you.
>
> Ron
>
>
> Ron Woods
> Computer Services Manager
> St. Clairsville Public Library
> 740-695-2062
> http://www.stclibrary.org
> woodsro at oplin.org<mailto:woodsro at oplin.org>
>
>
>
> Just a thought
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org<mailto:oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org>
> [mailto:oplintech-bounces at lists.oplin.org] On Behalf Of Josh Proffit
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:53 AM
> To: oplintech at oplin.org<mailto:oplintech at oplin.org>
> Subject: [OPLINTECH] Print server issues
>
> I need a hail mary pass here. I have one print server that -just over night it seems- doesn't like pdf files suddenly. There are several printers hosted on the server (2003) and it doesn't seem to matter which printer you choose, if it is a PDF file it takes forever to spool, the file bloats to some massive size,  and when it does print it's one page every 10 seconds. I've tried updated PCL drivers, postscript drivers, updated adobe reader...nothing I try is making a difference. Again it is only PDF files causing this, other documents zip right through. I'm banging my head against a keyboard here, any ideas?
>
>
>
> Joshua Proffit
> System Administrator
> Head of Information Technology Services
> Licking County Library
> 101 West Main Street
> Newark, Ohio 43055
> 740-349-5586
> jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info<mailto:jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info><mailto:jproffit at lickingcountylibrary.info
>
>
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