XP slow printing to shared printers solved

[SimpleSi]

Well - maybe

 

In the good old days, sharing a printer in a classroom (or a whole school) using Win98 machines was an excellent way of sharing resources in primaries.

 

Then one day, Mr Gates decided to nuke this facility and make printing to Win98 shares behave slowly and awkwardly - I don't know whether it happende with XP SP2 but it's happened.

 

Not having any money to go and buy networked printers - my users have just had to put up with this.

 

Then I tried building a simple Linux print server - basically same result - slow and awkward printing (Try to change a font in Word - wait 30 secs for machine to respond )

 

But today (for some strange reason) I decided to use the old DOS

 

net use lpt1: \\computer\printershare

 

trick that I last used about 10 years ago on Win 3.1

 

B*%%$r me - it b*&&^y worked

 

Tried it to both a Win98 shared printer and a Samba one and it was back to the good old days - like s^%t off a flat bladed implement

 

Admittedly - I've only tried it on one machine so far but fingers crossed

 

regards

 

Simon

Very nice to finish week on a winner

[SimpleSi]

Found KB entry when browsing so it seems Mr Gates now agrees with me !

 

Shame its one of those - you can only have it (And we might charge you) if you really really need it.

 

Can any of you Technet subcribing people get this hotfix directly without having to beg?

 

Hope if fixes the Win98 problem as well !

 

regards

 

Simon

[Norphy]

When I had to get a similar hotfix for ISA server, all I did was Phone MS and they gave the hot fix to me without any arguement. The operative even insisted that he stayed on the phone until I received the email with the hotfix in.

 

Just call them ffs