Devices Hanging when Connecting to Printer

[mw184]

I have a bit of a strange issue going on here and I am hoping someone has encountered it before.

 

Quick bit of background. I inherited this network back in July of this year after my old manager, who was the network manager, left. I got promoted to Network Manager and took over the running of the network. Towards the end of last term, the server that ran the print management died. As this is all it ran (old server not powerful enough to do anything else) it was not backed up. I have 2 other servers on site. A "file server" running 2008r2 (I know, I am desperate to either upgrade or replace it, but money is not there to do it. It gives me nightmares regularly) and our primary domain controller running 2012. The 2012 server handles DNS, SIMS, GPO, AD etc etc, and the "file server" runs as a failover for core services if the domain controller goes down. When the print server died, I rebuilt it on the "file server" as it had more storage space available and isn't handling too many core services. Rebuild went well (first time ever doing it) and everything setup and pushed out.

 

Currently though we are experiencing hanging when printing across the whole network, which we have never encountered before now. The drivers for the printers are the same as before and you can connect through to the server over ping instantly as everything is wired in and running through our switches etc, and the same goes for the printers.

 

I have checked everything I can think to check, but for some reason it seems to hang when connecting to the printer, and then when the print button is pressed. This behaviour is the same across both of the printers on the network and I do not know why.

 

Does anyone have any ideas? I am banging my head against the wall with this, and soon my colleagues will be slamming my head against the wall for me I think!

 

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

[DavR]

A couple of thoughts.....

 

Elimination - I assume you can print a test page to the printers from the server itself? We need to know whether the problem is between server and printer, or between workstation and server.

 

Firewall - have you got the necessary ports open for printer sharing? You probably do if it's a file server, but worth checking - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/best-practices-analyzer/smb-open-file-sharing-ports. If you have the option, you could try turning the firewall on the server off for a few minutes for testing.

 

Drivers - have you got both 64 and 32 bit drivers installed for the printers on the server?

 

Routing - it's worth checking that the subnet mask and gateway on all devices is the same, so that we know everyone can see everyone else.

 

SMB versions - this is a very vague memory, but I think Server 2008 uses quite an old version of SMB, which may be disabled by default in Windows 10. This might not be it, if file sharing is working OK, but it's something that occurred to me.

 

Of course, you could always just try installing these printers on your 2012 server, and see if it works through there. Two printers isn't going to be a huge load whatever they're on.

[mw184]

So going through your suggestions here are the following results:

 

Printing test pages from the server and my laptop completed almost instantly with no hang like other scenarios.

 

All of the required ports are configured correctly in the firewall.

 

The printers are running the 64bit version of the universal driver for Sharp (Sharp UD2 PCL6) which is provided by our printer company.

 

Subnet mask and gateway are all identical on all machines.

 

SMB is new to me so I would not know where to go to check this on Windows 10 or the server so I will do some digging into that one.

 

I am getting close to doing that to be honest, I can use the migration tool to migrate it over to the other server, and then run manual installs on our Intune devices (this is a hybrid environment of onsite domain and intune depending on the device, with the move to intune being the end goal)

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

[DavR]

That's interesting that your laptop can connect and use the printer shares just fine, but the workstations can't. I wonder what is the difference between the two?

 

I assume you've cleared out all the old printer connections when testing from the workstations?

[mw184]

My laptop has the issue when using any application such as word, adobe reader, even just browsers. Yet running that test print went through without issue so now I am more confused. I am wondering if the server that is running the Print Management simply cannot handle the job which is also concerning as its hardware is more powerful than the old one that died...

[mw184]

Although I can say for sure that the issue appears to be more severe in Microsoft Office application from what I am experiencing on my device. And just to complicate matters, my laptop is running Windows 11 as I am using it to test it for the future etc.

[DavR]

If test page works, but printing from an application causes a hang, that would suggest drivers to me.

 

If you're worried about performance and server load, have you checked whether the printer has "Render print jobs on client computers" ticked? That will take much of the processing load off your server. Alternatively, it could also be putting too much load on the client or application. Either way, I might try changing that setting and see what happens.

 

I'd be very surprised if either of your servers were struggling for resources just to do print sharing.

[mw184]

Thanks for your suggestions once again! I have just checked on the server and on the printers the option to render on device is checked so I have unchecked it and I will see how it goes. On the driver front, I have organised a chat with one of the IT team from our printer company to check if this could be the issue, and if it is to get them to provide a better driver to me, so I shall keep this thread up to date as I go.

[DaveTheTech]

Where is the spooling happening?

 

Posted after the above, but that would be a likely guess from the other steps that you have gone through

[mw184]

I am not entirely sure if I am honest as I cannot find the setting for it. I assume on the printer itself as we have had rare occasions of large volumes of pictures causing holdups on the printers, with the printers reporting it is spooling them.

 

Quick update on the drivers, turns out according to the printer service IT, we were given a very old and out of date print driver for our printers. This has now been updated to the latest one and once machines have been restarted tonight they should update. Until then the machines should be able to print on the old driver still so i will see how this goes.

[Buzzer90]

This just not linked to the mess Microsoft have created with their recent updates?

 

We're experiencing the same here with clients not being able to print, crashing app when trying to Print and some getting 'Calling for printer' when trying to print.

 

Only 'fix' so far has been uninstalling KB5006670 on the clients and hoping Microsoft sort their s**t out...

Edited November 10, 2021 by Buzzer90

[Oaktech]

Stupid question... have you restarted the server?

 

I have a site that does something similar. a hang of up to 45 minutes logging on, stuck on installing priners. No hang when pressing print, but a Verrrry long wait for the job to arrive as printable in the spooler and then a 2-45 minute wait for it to come out of the copier. Restarting the server, and ensuring the server is restarted frequently (once a fortnight) seems to keep it at bay.

[mw184]

I don't believe it is linked to the recent update issues as I prevented the update being pushed when I saw the problems that it has caused, and this issue has been happening for around a month now (but half term broke that up a bit) so since before the update was released.

 

As for the server restart, I tried that as one of my first tests. Since I preach about the turn it off and on again here to some people, I thought I should follow my own advice haha!

[Koldov]

checked whether the printer has "Render print jobs on client computers" ticked?

 

I have just checked on the server and on the printers the option to render on device is checked so I have unchecked it and I will see how it goes. .

 

That is the opposite of what was suggested though, just so you are clear... If you tick render on the device/computer the client does the work. If you untick it, the server has to do the work.

 

I don't believe it is linked to the recent update issues as I prevented the update being pushed when I saw the problems that it has caused, and this issue has been happening for around a month now

 

If it is more recent (with a rough starting date) what else happened then? Is it directly connected in the time line from moving to the new print server or was it OK for a while and then started? What sort of connection does the server have, how many printers is it dealing with, what sort of print volumes are we talking, is it all applications (Word and Adobe Acrobat can be a bit picky - try something a little dumber like paint as the test page seemed to be quick)?

 

Where is the spooling happening?

 

Check 'print directly' on the 'Advanced' tab (I think this is what determines if spooling happens on the server).

 

The only other advice is to try and check your whole network for references to the old print server, especially if it crashed and wasn't removed gracefully (sorry I can't be more specific - but GPOs and things like that, or that all the old printers were removed/deleted from the clients) the only time I had printing hang (apart from recent developments) was years and years ago (so I can't remember exactly) but when old printers or shared drives stick around in things like Office applications and they hang for ages while checking the whole network for those old resources before they move on. It shouldn't matter as I'm sure they are selecting the correct printer on the correct server (I presume \\OLD_SERVER\PRINTER 1 is now \\NEW_PRINTER\PRINTER 1), but if the old printers were not removed it may just take some time when you go to print and the application scans for all the old printers first = hang.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Koldov

[deathstardan]

This just not linked to the mess Microsoft have created with their recent updates? We're experiencing the same here with clients not being able to print, crashing app when trying to Print and some getting 'Calling for printer' when trying to print. Only 'fix' so far has been uninstalling KB5006670 on the clients and hoping Microsoft sort their s**t out...

We had the same issue but it was related to office 2016, so we imaged the machines with 21H1 and office 19 and it seems to work.