SOME Pcs refusing to print

[MrsGrinch]

Hi, all you wonderful and hugely helpful people. At one of my schools, the desktop PCs (old win 2000) on a wired-in network have unanimously decided to stop printing. The wireless laptops (slightler newer XPs) are all still printing fine.

 

It's a vanilla school network - dsl router, BT broadband out the other end. The printer is a minolta colour laser 2300DL, on the terrestrial side.

 

The only exception to this is the DNS server, which is on the terrestrial network but is an XP. He still prints. (Yes, we use it as a class PC but this isn't my decision. It's never used for web surfing and is virus-free.)

 

I've done as much debugging, unplugging and pinging as I know how. The desktop guys THINK they are printing - the jobs whizz out and the queue is empty. I don't have another printer to try - the inkjet has kicked the bucket and is unplugged.

 

Any suggestions? The last time we had a printing strike it turned out to be a wonky link station flooding the network, but then EVERYBODY was unwell.

 

Thanks. I've been given an extra afternoon at that school tomorrow to try and re-assert my authority.

 

Cheers.

 

Michele

[steve]

On some occasions I've seen printers set to auto delete any incoming mismatched page sizes.

 

So if the printer is set to A4 and you print on legal size paper the printer doesn't do anything but the client thinks its gone.

 

Could you set the XP dns PC up as a print server and try the 2000 clients via that?

[Ric_]

If you have recently changed the drivers this could be an issue - Windows Update may have handily done this for you!

 

Try printing directly to the printer from one of the clients to see if it works. Also try changing the printer driver on a client to see if that works.