Troubleshooting Printing Problems
This troubleshooting section provides different approaches to solving printing problems. The first section describes common printing problems and their solutions. You can solve problems by matching the problems you are having to common problems encountered with printing. The second section describes the different parts of the print process. You can learn how printing works, determine where the printing problem is occurring, and fix that part of the process.
Plug and Play printer is not automatically installing
You can instruct your computer to automatically detect and install Plug and Play printers when using the Add Printer wizard.
Windows 2000 comes with more printer drivers than ever before, but if the printer driver you need is not included with Windows 2000, your printer is not automatically installed, even if it is Plug and Play. To install such a printer, use the Add Printer wizard, and click Have Disk to provide the needed drivers.
If required drivers are available, you might want to restart your computer. Some printers are manually-detected Plug and Play devices, which require that you restart your computer before the printer is installed. Manually-detected Plug and Play printers typically use parallel port connections.
Cannot find a printer when searching by location
Searching by location requires that you use Windows 2000 or some other Active Directory-enabled client.
Make sure you are creating searches that match the printer location format used in your environment. For more information about printer location formats, see "Printer Locations and Active Directory" earlier in this chapter.
Bidirectional printer problem
If you encounter a problem with bidirectional printing, disable bidirectional printing and resend your print job.
To disable bidirectional printing, do the following:
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Printers.
Right-click the bidirectional printer, and then click Properties.
Click the Ports tab, clear Enable bidirectional support, and then click OK.
You do not have required permissions
If a printer requires security permissions, you must have the appropriate rights as provided by your user account or by a user group to which you belong.
Choose an alternate printer that does not require permissions, or that requires permissions that you have, or ask your administrator to grant you permissions to use the printer.
Bad printer port or improperly formatted data
Incorrectly configured ports can cause printing to fail. Typically, LPR ports include an IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and let DNS resolve the address followed by a queue name. In such a situation, there can be a resolution error for the FQDN or users might enter the Windows 2000 queue name, rather than the LPD's queue name. If either of these events occur, errors such as "Bad printer port" or "Improperly formatted data" can occur.
To find out if an incorrect FQDN name is being used, review the event log for your computer for event ID 2004. Event ID 2004 indicates that the target LPD did not respond as expected, which can occur with an incorrect FQDN.
A bad printer port or improperly formatted data error can also occur if users configure their computer to print directly to the printer or to use bidirectional communication, when the hardware they are using does not support these functions.
To solve these problems with the TCP/IP port you are using for the printer, try configuring the Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor for your printer.
To configure standard tcp/ip port monitor
From the Start menu, point to Settings, and click Printers.
Right-click the printer whose TCP/IP port monitor you want to configure, and then click Properties.
On the Ports tab, click the TCP/IP Port your printer uses, and then click Configure Port.
The dialog box you use to configure the TCP/IP Port Monitor appears in Figure 14.16.
Figure14.16 Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor Dialog Box
To solve problems with the TCP/IP port you are using for a printer, try the following changes:
Check Port Name, Printer Name, or IP Address in the Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor dialog box and correct them, if necessary.
Try toggling from one protocol to another. some printers require you use one or the other.
Try enabling LPR Byte Counting. Some printers required that jobs accurately represent their size. for more information about byte counting, see "New Ways to Send Print Jobs" earlier in this chapter.
Printer jobs go to the queue, but do not print
If you are using a multifunction peripheral (MFP), DOT4 might not have properly detected your print device at startup. Shut down your computer and printer, then turn on your printer followed by your computer. Typically, DOT4 now recognizes all features of your MFP.
Graphic images do not print as expected
Disable enhanced metafile spooling (EMF).
Try printing to the PostScript driver, if the printer supports it. If this works, the problem is with the UniDriver.
If postscript fails, there is a problem with the GDI or the UniDriver that is working with the application to created the print job. To verify that it is an application-related problem, try printing another document from another application.
Try printing shorter jobs or fewer jobs at a time. You might be exceeding the print spooler's capacity.
Pages are only partially printed
Check that there is sufficient memory to print the document.
Pages only partially print when the page size of the document you are trying to print is bigger than the page size available for the printer to print.
If text is missing, verify whether the missing text uses a font which is valid and is installed.
The printer might not have adequate toner. Try replacing the printer's toner cartridge.
Printing is slow
If the print server is taking an unusually long time to render the job, try defragmenting the server's disk and check that there is adequate space for temporary files on the hard disk.
If you are using printer pooling to handle a large number of jobs, and print jobs are taking a long time to get to the top of queue, consider adding more printers to the pool to distribute the print jobs over a larger set of printers.
PostScript printer returns an "Out of Memory" error
To print the current document, you must allocate more memory for the printer or send smaller print jobs.
To add more PostScript memory, modify Available PostScript Memory on the Device Settings tab in Printer Properties. You must have Manage printer rights to change Available PostScript Memory.
Break large print jobs into smaller parts. For example, for a 10-page print job, you can send the first five pages in one print job and then send the last five pages in a second print job. This reduces the amount of printer memory required.
Computer stalls while printing
For local printers:
Check that the appropriate printer driver is installed. Reinstall if necessary.
Check for adequate space on the hard disk.
For printers on a network:
Check that the server has enough free hard disk space.
Try disabling EMF spooling, and send the job in RAW format.
There are a series of steps that take place to allow a print job to be completed. Understanding these steps and their significance will help you solve problems you encounter. These steps are as follows:
Administrator creates a print share on a print server.
Client system connects to the share.
Client system creates a print job.
Client system sends job to the print share.
Print server receives, spools, and modifies the print job.
Print server sends job to the printer.
Printer interprets the job and prints it.
Administrator creates a print share on print server
This makes the printer available to the network. Necessary drivers are stored on the server for distribution to clients and the print server waits to receive jobs to be produced by the printer.
If this step is not completed properly, users might be unable to connect to the printer on the server, despite installing the printer properly.
Client system connects to the share
Using any of the Windows 2000 techniques, such as Point and Print, the Add Printer wizard, or finding the printer in My Network Places, the client connects to the printer. If necessary, appropriate drivers are downloaded to the client's computer and information about the printer is recorded.
If this step is not completed properly, the user might not locate the printer you want in the list of available printers.
Client system creates a print job
Users initiate this process by choosing to print a document. If the printer drivers are not available on the user's computer, the GDI cannot properly create the print job.
Client system sends job to the print share
A network connection between client and print server must be available.
Print server receives, spools, and modifies the print job
The print server must have enough space to accommodate print jobs.
Print server sends job to the printer
Proper port or language monitor must be available for printer type. Network connection between print server and printer must be working.
Printer interprets the job and prints it
The printer must be turned on, online, connected to the network, and functioning properly.
Troubleshooting When Printing to a Non-Windows Print Server or Printer
UNIX
If printing through a UNIX server fails, make sure that the Standard Port Monitor (SPM) or Lprmon is installed. If it is not installed, you might not be able to produce print information that is usable by the server. For more information about installing SPM, see "New Ways to Send Print Jobs" earlier in this chapter. For more information about working with UNIX, see "Operating System Exceptions" earlier in this chapter or "Interoperability with UNIX" in this book.
If printing through a NetWare server fails, make sure that you have a client installed on your computer such as Microsoft Client Service for NetWare or Novell's client, Novell Client 32. Such clients allow your computer to send print jobs to the NetWare server, which the server then relays to the printer. If this is not installed, you might not be able to produce print information that is usable by the server. For more information, see "Operating System Exceptions" earlier in this chapter or "Interoperability with NetWare" in this book.
If printing through an IBM server fails, make sure that you have connected to the LPT port that corresponds to the printer to which you are sending the job. For more information about SPM, see "New Ways to Send Print Jobs" earlier in this chapter. If your clients need to communicate with a mainframe computer, ensure that 3270 emulation software is installed. If your clients need to communicate with an AS/400, ensure that 5250 emulation software is installed.
For more information about working with IBM servers, see "Operating System Exceptions" earlier in this chapter or "Interoperability with IBM Host Systems" in this book or for more information about working with IBM, see "Interoperability with IBM Host Systems" in this book.
If printing to a printer using the AppleTalk protocol fails, make sure that Services for Macintosh and the AppleTalk Port Monitor, Sfmmon, are installed on your computer.
For more information about working with Macintosh printers, see "Operating System Exceptions" earlier in this chapter.