Papercut Intermittent Issues

[ITGURU]

We've had papercut coming on for 2 years and going to a centralised print server for printing. We still get odd requests where users don't get the Papercut Popup or the Follow-Me printer not mapped.

There are no network issues, and we use the local cached version of the papercut client.

Does anyone else have intermittent issues like the above? It would be nice if it worked 100% rather than having to tell users to log off and back on which usually cures the issue.

We have 10GB backbone, 1GB to each PC, Papercut/Print server is virtual with 8GB RAM and I've recently adjusted the max memoryit can use with the latest update, but doesn't seem to have helped any.

Thanks.

[DalekSec]

I've used papercut at two different sites and both had these problems.

 

We've put the Papercut bat file for starting the client on all staff desktops, so instead of having to re log they just have to click on the green P on their desktop!

[ITGURU]

Thanks for the info - I hate it when people blame the network when in fact it's the software! Not that they have, but I could see it coming.

[gds64]

If the print queue isn't being mapped, it's probably not a PaperCut issue.

[ITGURU]

If the print queue isn't being mapped, it's probably not a PaperCut issue.

 

True on that part - however logging off and back on then pulls in the printer.

I've tried a combination of GPP and login scripts.

 

Random as to when or not the printer doesn't appear.

[Meldrew]

We've had the papercut popup not appearing - our fix has been to reinstall the client on the PC (remotely) and reboot, but I wonder if that has been a bit of an overkill. But yes, definitely have the issue randomly.

 

Meldrew

[Mozzy12]

I have seen this problem here too. Very occasionally, but it does happen enough to be a pain. My solution was to give staff a shortcut to the PaperCut client in the start menu. They have been told that if they try to print and do not receive the PaperCut popup, they can go to the start menu and run the PaperCut option there to get it running.

[ITGURU]

I have seen this problem here too. Very occasionally, but it does happen enough to be a pain. My solution was to give staff a shortcut to the PaperCut client in the start menu. They have been told that if they try to print and do not receive the PaperCut popup, they can go to the start menu and run the PaperCut option there to get it running.

 

I'm using the cached version so don't know why we get the issue, as it should always be running locally.

[forkies]

Have had similar issues, I set a gpo to run the local exe on logon so it always defiantly runs (as before it sometimes failed). I do however get the odd user with the wrong printing accounts and they cannot print as don’t have permission to them. Then they do have to log off and back on. Not running the latest version though so that might now be fixed.

 

We also had a problems with printers not mapping consistently for our student computers, ended up changing the way we map printers for students. I did speak to a few people and we all ended up agreeing that a windows update must have broken the way we had been deploying printers (still works fine to this day on staff machines) but as it had been so long since the issue started cropping up we had no idea which update had broken it.

[mullet_man]

Have you checked the event log? It should give you reason why the printer isn’t mapping.

 

The only time we’ve had issues with Papercut really is when staff bring their laptops back in from home and they haven’t logged in at school allowing the GP to tell the application to run at login.

 

I’ve had the issue where the wrong account appears a few times and no idea how that happens but a reboot of the device sorts it.

 

I would suspect the Papercut app not running and the no mapped printer are separate issues.

 

Thinking on I did have an issue where the Papercut client would break when we’ve done an upgrade, leaving the client half installed.

[FN-GM]

We fixed the issue with the paper cut client by running the version that stores a local cache.

 

The deployment of printers has been a problem as well. Upgrading the print server to 2016 Significantly helped but it hasn't fixed it totally.

[ITGURU]

Thanks all for your replies. With the issue being intermittent, random, and only affecting users now and again, it's difficult to resolve completely. There obviously isn't any issues with how the deployment is setup as a log off and back on resolves it, and as mentioned I've tried various ways to run papercut and deploy the printers but none of the ways seem to give us a 100% reliable printing system where things map/run at login, whereas everything else on the network works fine.

[Big_Ted]

If the print queue is not mapped sometimes that is beyond papercuts control and does suggest a deeper problem that is perhaps impacting the client running.

What popup are users sometimes not getting? is it the balance or when they send a print job?

If it is the balance window then is the client process starting at all? How is the client deployed? have you enabled debug in the pc-client? It might be worth trying to run notepad.exe from the same location to see if that always appears but the client does not.

If its the popup when they print then, what happens to the print job? again i would enable debug.

[psydii]

We use delayed start for Papercut client (cached version)

 

Also we had terrible trouble when we used the FQDN for the papercut server in the client config, it seems to use its own DNS client for the look up and it was a bit flakey.

 

Haven't seen an issue recently, but this might just be that the user's have figured out log off/on is quicker than logging a ticket and waiting for a response.