Printers go offline 'randomly'

[william_tropico]

Hello,

 

First of all a bit of history...I HATE PRINTERS!

 

We had all our printers managed by Windows Server 2008 R2 and was working fine for as long as I can remember. Then all of a sudden (I had installed some skydive sync tool which might have caused the problem) certain printers would appear offline to both the server and the user. We could still ping the printers (they all have static ip addresses) but not print to them. This was a good opportunity to migrate the printers to a new server running Windows Server 2012 R2. The move over was fine and users could happily print. Fast forward 3 months. Just come in this morning and about 20 of the classroom printers now appear offline on our web management window and getting helpdesk tickets about 'not being able to print'.

 

The temporary solution to this is to turn it off and on again but am keen to find out why it's started to do this again.

 

• Most printers are OKi devices
  
• Using Pcounter as print management
  
• printers all have static IP addresses
  

 

Any help would be great

 

Thank you,

William

[ardvark]

Printers are a nightmare... can you reach the webadmin pages when they are "offline"? if so check out the printer status it sometimes gives clues. if you can't wake it up and then check on the web admin for any dodgy sleep settings.

 

also could be something is interfering with the SNMP response from the printer. On the ports tab of the affected printers, Configure the port and uncheck SNMP and test. if you re-enable it ensure the port setup is exactly match that on the printer.

Edited April 2, 2014 by ardvark
xtra info

[william_tropico]

Printers are a nightmare

indeed they are!

 

...can you reach the webadmin pages when they are "offline"?

Yes. I can access the webpage fine. Status says ONLINE and no sleep/power settings enabled.

 

also could be something is interfering with the SNMP response from the printer

We have tested some printers with SNMP disabled and there is no change with the device going off randomly. Edited April 2, 2014 by william_tropico
additional quote about SNMP added

[sted]

try going to the printer properites oirts find the correct port click configure and disable snmp. I found older hps did that when we went to 2008/r2 disabling snmp cured it

[seawolf]

I'm thinking it has something to do with Pcounter since it's occurred on two different servers on two different versions of Windows OS. But, let's try to isolate the problem first before coming to any conclusions:

 

1. Are you able to do a test print from the Print Server when this occurs? If no, then the problem may be with the printers.

2. Have you tried printing directly from a client to a printer, bypassing the server? If you can't, the problem may be the print driver or the printers. Has the print driver been updated recently?

3. What happens when you restart the Print Server service rather than restarting the server? If this fixes it then you have a problem with the print service and may have some conflicts with other software.

4. What happens if you simply restart the Pcounter services on the server when this problem occurs? Does it fix it? If it does, then Pcounter is the culprit.

 

 

You have to think about the chain of events when a print job goes out. The client calls the print driver to send the print request, Pcounter acts as a middle-man from the client to the printer and either lets the print job through to the print server or rejects it. The print server sends the job to the printer. The problem could be anywhere along the chain.

[william_tropico]

Thanks seawolf, I will give all this a try.

 

We have a 'second test print server' running a trial of PaperCut and managed to pint to one of the 'offline' printers and it printed. Will narrow down the problem first though

[hockey930]

William, have you made any headway with this issue. Whatever you have/had going on seems identical to what we have going on. I had this problem on my 2003 print server. I thought, well it's old anyway so I will build I new one. I have migrated all of out printers to a 2012 R2 server and have the exact same issues.

Anything you can help me with would be greatly appreciated.

[william_tropico]

Hello @hockey930

 

It's been a while since we moved to PaperCut and a new 2012 R2 server. We havent had this issue for a while. At the time I did create a 'dirty fix' until I could figure out what was happening. The printers that kept going offline had a telnet option. Using a php telnet class I added a about 5 printers to each php file and would reset the network card on them using telnet. I would do this every morning at 7am.

 

PHP Class - PHP Telnet: freeware script to make Telnet connections from PHP scripts

 

example call procedure for Oki 2632 Printer

 

require_once "PHPTelnet.php";

$telnet = new PHPTelnet();


// PHPTelnet will connect to the local host via 127.0.0.1
//Computer Room 6
$result = $telnet->Connect('172.16.1.63','admin','password');
if ($result == 0) {
	$telnet->DoCommand('5', $result);
	echo $result;
	$telnet->DoCommand('2', $result);
	echo $result;
	$telnet->DoCommand('1', $result);
	echo $result;
	$telnet->Disconnect();
} ?>

 

Or you could do a batch script to call the telnet commands. example below.

 

 

 

This will probably differ depending on what printers you have.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited September 23, 2015 by william_tropico
spelling, pictures in wrong order