Network printing really slow

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anders Blomkvist
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Anders Blomkvist

We have performance problems with our Laserjet 4000TN printer. The setup is
as follows:

Switched 100FD network, printer connected using 10HD JetDirect card, clients
running Windows XP Pro, Windows 2000 Pro and Windows NT 4.0. Clients are
printing directly to the printer using MS TCP/IP printing feature (HP
JetAdmin in case of NT 4.0 client) or through the printserver which is
running Windows 2003 Server. Printer drivers are PCL6.

The problems began after upgrading the server from NT 4.0 SBS to 2003 Server
and replacing the old network hub with a new switch. We are printing plain
text, no fancy graphics, but just can't get anywhere near the 16
pages/minute specified by HP for our printer. We have done the following
troubleshooting actions unsuccessfully:

1. Changed from PCL6 to PCL5e and PS drivers, using latest drivers from HP.
2. Connected the printer directly to the printserver using parallell port
(ECP,EPP)
3. Upgraded JetDirect firmware to latest version
4. Disabled advanced printing features

We have no network errors (Rx/Tx errors) and the LAN performance is very
satisfactory for a 100FD LAN. Are there any configuration changes that we
can do to improve performance?

To respond directly via mail - remove the _nospam_ tag in the mailaddress.

Regards,
Anders
 
--------------------
From: "Anders Blomkvist" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win2000.printing
Subject: Network printing really slow
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 07:24:09 GMT


We have performance problems with our Laserjet 4000TN printer. The setup is
as follows:

Switched 100FD network, printer connected using 10HD JetDirect card, clients
running Windows XP Pro, Windows 2000 Pro and Windows NT 4.0. Clients are
printing directly to the printer using MS TCP/IP printing feature (HP
JetAdmin in case of NT 4.0 client) or through the printserver which is
running Windows 2003 Server. Printer drivers are PCL6.

The problems began after upgrading the server from NT 4.0 SBS to 2003 Server
and replacing the old network hub with a new switch. We are printing plain
text, no fancy graphics, but just can't get anywhere near the 16
pages/minute specified by HP for our printer. We have done the following
troubleshooting actions unsuccessfully:

1. Changed from PCL6 to PCL5e and PS drivers, using latest drivers from HP.
2. Connected the printer directly to the printserver using parallell port
(ECP,EPP)
3. Upgraded JetDirect firmware to latest version
4. Disabled advanced printing features

We have no network errors (Rx/Tx errors) and the LAN performance is very
satisfactory for a 100FD LAN. Are there any configuration changes that we
can do to improve performance?

To respond directly via mail - remove the _nospam_ tag in the mailaddress.

Regards,
Anders
-------------------

Check out this article:
Q816627: TCP/IP Port Printing May Be Slow on Windows 2000
support.microsoft.com/?id=816627

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Thanks for the tip but I've already applied it. We have the same problem
with clients running Windows XP Pro and I guess this is permanently fixed in
XP.

/Anders
 
I've done some measurements now and the problem seem to be isolated to XP
clients. Printperformance from the XP client is half the one on the W2K
client - 8ppm vs 16ppm and 24s from print start to first page finished vs
15s for the W2K client. They both use 100FD through the same switch and use
the same network printer (same driver) on the same server. I've reset the
LPT_Timeout in the client registry from 15s to 3s without success. There has
to be something in the XP configuration that causes this but I'll be damned
if I can find it.

br/Anders
 
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