[lizzeydripping]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is not the right forum - I'd need to know what was wrong to know exactly where to post, and that's the problem - I haven't a clue!

We are a small business running XP on 8 pc's on an SBS 2003 server. We seem to be having increasing problems with the network, or is it the system, or XP, I don't know.

Symptoms include - slow running of the pc's when saving, particularly excel spreadsheets - it takes ages and usually crashes. When we shut down word at the end of the day, we get a message saying that changes have been made to normal.dot. Not by any of us they haven't, at least so far as we are aware. When we send documents to print, the system seems to choose an output tray almost at random, bearing no relation to the tray that has been selected - it may say tray 2, but it is printing from tray 3. The printer is correctly configured to know which paper should come out of which tray. Additionally, for some reason the default output tray is whatever tray was last printed from, despite the fact that the printer settings are configured to automatically default to tray 3. If I ever print a word document just using letterheaded paper and then save it, Outlook automatically defaults so that all my emails come out on letterheaded. It is time consuming and frustrating to always have to double check which tray you are printing from, then have it come out of a different tray to the one you thought anyway! Every day when I come in and log on, I discover that during the night my default printer has been changed to the Dymolabel printer which we rarely use for labels...I change it back and it holds the setting all day, but then resets again.

We run Sophos antivirus - no viruses detected. I have run adaware and Spyware blaster - nothing out of the ordinary detected. I am tearing my hair out - it's like a ghost in the machine - does anyone have any idea what might be making this happen, or has anyone encountered similar problems before? I don't know whether all these problems are related or not.

Any and all advice gratefully received!

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Do you have an Administrator for your network, by this I mean somebody who does all the new installs and configurations to the whole system? If it was me I would delete all the printers (only because it sounds like there are many complications with the printers and rather than dig through them all just remove all of them) and reinstall them again, share them, and make configurations. Make sure all updates are being installed on a regular basis, and drivers are also kept updated. The normal.doc
situation, I'm not sure on, maybe this link will help somewhat. Let us know what happens.

-=jonnyrotten=-

[-=jonnyrotten=-]

Do you have an Administrator for your network, by this I mean somebody who does all the new installs and configurations to the whole system? If it was me I would delete all the printers (only because it sounds like there are many complications with the printers and rather than dig through them all just remove all of them) and reinstall them again, share them, and make configurations. Make sure all updates are being installed on a regular basis, and drivers are also kept updated. The normal.doc
situation, I'm not sure on, maybe this link will help somewhat. Let us know what happens.

-=jonnyrotten=-

[lizzeydripping]

OK, I'll maybe try that. The bad news is that I am the administrator. Talk about learning on the job!

I'll have a look at that link you have suggested re normal.dot and keep you posted!

Many thanks for the advice!

[-=jonnyrotten=-]

Also it is very important to make sure that the correct, updated drivers are installed to each corresponding printer. Some printers will function on the incorrect drivers, but will not function properly. This might be part of your problem. Please keep me updated on this. Thank you. Good luck.

-=jonnyrotten=-