I guess it was wishful thinking when I installed my first Windows 2003 SP2 hoping i’d only had the help and support issue to worry about
The day after the installation i got a call from the client to say they were having problems with one particular printer (HP Colour Laser 3600) where it sometimes prints and somtimes doesn’t
I logged onto the server and noticed a series of jobs in the queue. I purged the jobs and restarted the spooler and sent a couple of successful test pages. Job done (so i thought)
Client called back again. It was now that they started to tell me they had been moving the printer and were getting messages on the status screen telling them the tray was empty when it wasn’t
This clouded the issue somewhat but when i told them take the printer off the floor (!!!) that problem disappeared
Eventually i rebooted the server thinking they were sending documents that had something strange in it.
It was nagging in the back of my head that it seemed too much of a coincidence that this had happened the day after i’d done the update but it was only on one printer…surely if there was an issue with the spooler itself it would effect all printers
I just checked my email and the clients office manager had emailed me to tell me they were still having problems so i decided too have another look.
I looked to see if there was anything different between the printers that were working and the one that wasn’t…and i found it
SNMP
The other two had it disabled…the problematic one was enabled but left unconfigured
When i install printers i disable everything not needed…including SNMP (this is only a small site where there are as many printers as there are people!) so there isn’t any management software to utilise it.
I didn’t install the colour laser so i’ll be having a chat with someone tomorrow!
- Goto the printer on the server, right click and select properties
- Select the PORTS tab
- Click CONFIGURE port
- Take the tick out of the SNMP section
- Click ok until your back at the printers folder
As soon as i applied the changes the printer came back online and the jobs stuck in the queue disappeared
I did a bit of digging afterwards and it turns out there were changes to how SNMP handles printers
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/12009443/m/752004225831
This site gets the credit:
http://www.hoyty.com/hoytyweblog/archives/2007/04/windows_2003_se.html
it was down when i first checked but google cache is here
I’ll be keeping a close eye on this site for next couple of weeks
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