printing from thin client

[crusher]

I am having problems with thin client printing. When the users print to a networked hp2600 everything is fine unless we print direct from a website then the printer locks up and the document hangs and can only be deleted by restarting the print spooler (or restarting the server!!).
Is this a common problem or are we just being awkward. I am not very confident with thin client and terminal services, I am more accustomed to Ranger, Classmaster and Rm Schoolshare networks. We are a Primary school and all our computers are HP5520 clients apart from a few old RM machines left over from a schoolshare/storebox network.
We have no purchased support for our network and FourS who we can buy support from are not able to help with thin client. I would be interested in any schools not too far from Leatherhead in Surrey who are running thin client that have a trained technician who would be willing to show me how well things can run and maybe who could comment on the setup I have and what improvements could be made. (A skip??!!)

[dhicks]

When the users print to a networked hp2600 everything is fine unless we print direct from a website then the printer locks up and the document hangs and can only be deleted by restarting the print spooler (or restarting the server!!).

Search these forums for 2600 / 2600n, there's a good chance it's more likely a problem with that particular printer rather than the thin clients.

--
David Hicks

[bossman]

We don't actively encourage printing directly from the internet unless it has a print friendly button as some of the pages may include hidden values which can be misinterpreted by the print spooler that is why it hangs.
Encourage the staff and students to either use copy and paste techniques or printer friendly web pages.

[maniac]

In one of the schools I worked in we actually removed the print functions from internet explorer as we constantly found reems of paper of printed websites on the ICT room printers. They had to copy and paste whatever content it was they wanted, which made them think a bit more about what they actually needed to print. This was a middle school and was 3 years ago now, I don't think we could do it now as use of the internet is so much more wide spread than it was then.

Mike.

[ajbritton]

My guess would be a driver issue. My organization has just gone through a big terminal server implementation and we have had to ditch all our HP 2600 printers. This was because there was no 64 bit driver, but it does say something about the commitment of HP to support these printers in a business environment.

If possible try the same printing jobs on a different type of printer and see if the problem is still there.

[richard-wilton]

You will probably find that this fault of the spooler stopping is because the hp2600 is a 'host based' printer which is not intended as a printer to be connected to a centralized print server. this is because all the processing is done on the host os not on the printer itself. This printer was designed to be printed to from individual workstations directly by TCPIP. You can confirm this with hp technical support. the only way you may be able to get around the problem is to create a schedule to stop and restart the print spooler at certain intervals but i would advise replacing the printer with a "true" network printer.(unfortunatley they are a bit more expensive)