I have an interesting printing problem on one server. This is a W2003 Server SP1, standard edition. What happens is this: We try to print out bills (which means a large amount of print jobs). This job is sent from Citrix and goes to the spooler. And the printer starts printing. After a while there's a message coming up on the server: "The print spooler was unable to connect to the printer. This can be caused by your printer being turned off, the cable beeing unplugged, or beeing connected by a VPN, which will block your access to your local network. Your document will print when the printer becomes available." Until I click the OK button (and this message only appears on the server), nothing else will happen on that printer. When I click OK, the printer will continue after a while. Later on it will appear again.
When this happens, there is an event logged in the Event Viewer. The entry is an information entry only: "Document 263, Remote Downlevel Document owned by AquaAdmin was moved to position 1 on HP LaserJet 4250 PCL.". I've checked this out on eventid.net, and they had no comments on this one.
I've tried a ping -t to the printer, actually for a very long time while printing, and there wasn't a single pack lost. It's not the network speed either, which is the fastest i've ever worked with.
This only happens when printing these big jobs, and it happens on two printers: HPLJ 1200 and HPLJ 4250.
One of these has a network card, the other one uses a JetDirect box. I suspect that these problems belongs to W2003 SP1, as this never was a problem before the upgrade (it used to be a W2000 server).
I must also mention that this happens from at least two different programs, so it isn't the program we are printing from that has the problem. The server is also updated with every patch and update.
I gave you quite a challenge, didn't I?
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