Why doesnt this print job leave the print queue?

[scoobysteve]

Hi All,

I've got a client who has a Kyocera FS-1920N printer who prints a 1 page document for 300 clients of theirs at the end of month - although not a batch print. All these documents are printed in very close succession.

the clients have informed that the print queue is giving a "print job failed" error.

What gets me is, a 1 page document isnt normally large enough to hold up the queue and normally processed quicker than the eye can see, thus the printer should be pumping through the jobs.

So, i created a 200 page document in MS Word and printed it to this printer. The job spooled to 350kb of 350kb and then stayed in the queue while the printer was still printing out the pages of the document. I would have thought that when it has finished spooling, the job will clear the queue even though the printer is still in the process of printing out the document.

Because of this scenario, all other jobs behind it in the queue must time out? as then the status of the awaiting prints says "Error - Printing"..

Anyone know where i should be looking?

I've loaded latest drivers, latest firmware, tried different network cable, different network port and still the same problem? printer or network problem?

Any suggestions would be great. thanks.

[Wynard]

You could try to

- manually stop the spool service, empty C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS (but do not delete the folder itself) and then restart the spool service. Might clean out some corrupted data that still hangs around and hinders normal operation.

- update the firmware. I think the problem is the printer. It happens every day that some printer somewhere just ceases operating normally because the firmware got corrupted some way or another. Firmware updates can be miracle cures

Hope this helps.

[scoobysteve]

Hi,

thanks for your reply...

I've got each pc printing to directly to the printer (not via share) and each one has experienced that problem so i wouldnt think that it was driver related - so hopefully i shouldnt have to clear the files in the spool folder.

I've updated the firmware and supposedly the problem is still there although during my visits to this client, all seems to be ok.

I've changed the Network card on this machine as a test as yesterday was meant to be the biggest run of prints for month. I didnt receive a call back so fingers cross, hopefully it is a bad NIC - although saying that, a continous ping test was successful even when the print job had failed.

well, anymore suggestions would be greatly appreciated. thanks

[unisys12]

Have you checked for packet loss?

I had one the other day that drove me nuts... I could send a test print, from the driver, and it seemed to print just fine. I did notice though that the printer icon in the system tray was there a bit longer than it should. Anyway, when trying to print a simple page from notepad, I got the print failed message. When I checked the que, size of the job was not the same as what was sent to the printer. In other words, the document was 7kb and the que showed that it had only sent 6.8kb. The MFP was basically locked up at this point as well, waiting on the last part of the file.

I ran "ping (ip address of the printer) -t " and found that I was looseing several packets in small amount of time. You can tell this by recieveing a response for several returns, then nothing, then recieve a response again. I also noticed that the times varied quit alot too. One response might have been 3ms and the next might be 120+ms.

Just something to look for. By the way, it was a bad cable running from the upstairs router.

[schooltech]

Unisys, this is a great find and explains something I've said for quite a while, which is that not all problems are that difficult. It just takes a bit of efficient, effective troubleshooting skills to identify the problem.

Scoobysteve, you could have one massive collision domain, and something on the network might have recently changed and making it even worse.

Did you use a x-over cable and print directly to the printer, rather than go through the network? I know you said that you changed the cable and switched ports, and I assume that the cable you switched is still going through their network.

[Vulkor]

Yep what I do when I have issues. CROSSOVER CABLE... to my Laptop.

Or I bring my own router and wire it up, run a ton of data from large print jobs. and also continuous pinging. Its how I discovered the problem of the Wireless Print Server being the problem and not the copier before.

[scoobysteve]

Hi All,

thanks for all your input..

I havent tried the crossover cable to laptop as i could not replicate the fault that they were experiencing and even when i did see a fault, i dont even know if it was the same problem as what they were getting. this problem is so intermittent.

the clients said to me "it had been playing up all day and right up to the hour before you got here"... then while i was there (for 1.5hrs) not one fault...

Anyhow, when the machine did fault for me (whether or not it was the same problem as what the client had seen), i had been already running a continuous ping and it was replying consistently for about 5 mins - not one drop out.

With what unisys12 said, my spool file size and the size of data that was being sent out was actually reaching the right size, ie 304kb/304kb but just wasnt exiting the queue. Whether or not this is because the NIC isnt sending back an "ACK" message to the PC or vice versa, who knows...

anyhow, since i've changed the NIC, the client hasnt called back just yet..i'm going to leave it for most of today and then see how they went..

by the way, i've spent 2.5 hrs there so far, and i can guarantee, they will not pay for the total time spent... i reckon even half of the labour charge will be difficult...

[Vulkor]

Don't you hate when calls take too long and customers won't pay the bill. Sometimes gotta cut your losses.

[Captain Scott]

I had a similar issue and a hotfix for Windows Server 2003 fixed the problem. See below link for more info http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883673/en-us . Hope this info helps someone, it took me days of testing to get to this point. Changed controller ect. One other thing you could try is to use the LPR port instead and test results (unix print services for windows)

[schooltech]

Good find----thanks Captain.