HELP! - Printers showing Offline on network

Hi

I have an issue with our print server showing half the printers on our network as "Ready" and half of them as "Offline". I have tried rebooting the server once this morning, and tried rebooting the print spooler from services.msc, but this has not fixed the problem.

We run server 2003 standard edition here with service pack2, i did find a link to another post > http://www.edugeek.net/forums/window...e-2003sp2.html

but there was no real solution stated

please help as I am getting moaned at now by annoying teachers lol

firefox_2006

1. Check you haven't put a new DHCP server on the system and that this isn't handing out the wrong IP's... (Done this before when setup new DHCP server without the reservations required!)

2. Check the physical network... Has someone unplugged a critical switch, cable, etc.. likely given that you're seeing whole blocks disappear.

we've seen this on a few printers too recently running server 2003 sp2 too.

have nt found a solution other than to log in to print server and put them on-line again....

sorry can't help any more than that

How good is the print server ?

My first thought, was there was a limit to the number of printers that windows 2003 server can support (I'm sure I read this somewhere, but it may have been NT or 2000). Anyway, the only relevant google results all make reference to memory etc.

They recommend using as few drivers as possible, and getting more memory (if necessary).
You do have a large number of printers, and makes/models. See if changing all the brothers to use the Brother "generic" PCL6, and a generic one fo the Dells etc, you won't be able to do this with colour printers.

If you want to remove the Microsoft XPS document printer, you can delete it from "printers and Faxes" > File > Server Properties > Drivers , then select and delete.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by User3204

My first thought, was there was a limit to the number of printers that windows 2003 server can support

---

I've had over 60 printers connected to a single server before, and experienced very few problems. I have seen this problem before, and it normally occured only when the printer was left on and idle for a while (over 24hrs) turning it off and on again seemd to fix it for us.

What's the latency like between the server and printers? trying pinging one of the printers from the server repeatedly and see if it's taking a while to reply, or if there's sparodic missing replies. If so, it could be a comms issue. Other than that I'm stumped!

Mike.

Maybe an SNMP problem.
Is the printer on the server checking the SNMP status of the print server? Its in the printer port setup on the Server. I think if it is and the printer-server SNMP is setup is ok then no problem but if not then windows will give up after a while and mark offline. This 'feature' was added after a service pack.
Simple fix is to switch off SNMP status reporting/checking.

Have come accross an issue a while ago where with certain print drivers (mainly Microsoft standard ones) which would cuase the server to get a message telling it the printer was 'offline', although the printer could accept jobs and worked fine in all other aspects.

It seemed to be solved by making sure the exact, manafacturer drivers were installed. Turned out that the printer this happened on was going into power-save, was telling the driver but the driver thought that meant offline:D

May not be your problem, worth a go though.

Hi all,

Thanks for all your replies, its weird because although some printers are showing as "offline" people can still print to them. I will have a play with some of the suggestions mentioned, might be a case of re-installing them with the exact manufacturer drivers.

Our servers are 3 years old (HP Proliant ML150's) we have a new G5 ML350 sitting doing nothing at the moment.

regards

firefox_2006

I had the same issue. You need to apply this hotfix or do the manual part of disabling the SNMP for each printer port in the print server.

I manually did it without touching the registry on the server since we are not using any SNMP management for thes printers.

support.microsoft.com/kb/946198