Strange Network Printing Problem

Hey everyone,

I've got a wierd printer problem. I have a computer with a local printer attached to it (HP Laserjet 1000), and a networked color printer (HP ColorLaserjet 3800dm) which the user who sits at that computer occaisionally needs to print to.

The user can print all day to the local printer without problems. However, as soon as she prints a document to the netowrk printer, the local printer is unable to print anything. She can still print to the network printer though. In order for the locally attached printer to work, it has to be removed, software and driver uninstalled, and then reinstalled. after that, it will print just fine (until anything is printed to the network printer).

No seemingly relevant events are generated, and I've been looking at the Microsoft Knowledge base for a while, to no avail. Any ideas?

Client computers are XP SP2, and server OS is MS Server 2003

Thanks!

Sounds like a print spooler problem with the local machine...

By 'network printer' is this printer installed directly on the client's machine? Or is it installed on your server, shared out and then the client's PC is connected to the network printer through the server?

Two ways of networking a printer:

1) Give the printer a static Ip address, plug in a LAN cable and connect it to the switch. Admins then go to each work station and manually drop in the CD and locally install the 'network' printer. Yes, this is a 'network' printer, but documents are spooled on the local machine...

2) Give the printer a static IP, plug in a lan cable, connect it to the switch, then install the printer on the server. You would then right click the printer (on the server) select 'Sharing' and select 'share this printer' and give it a name. Admins then go to each workstation, click 'Start' => 'Run'. In the run box, enter: \\server_name. The items shared off the server will then appear in the window. Right click the printer and select 'Connect'. The server then distributes the required print driver and documents are spooled through the server to the network printer; thus eliminating the stress and conflict on the local machines.

(I highly recommend using your server as a print server as in #2 if you are not already...)

Anyway, next time this happens, try restarting the 'Print Spooler' service on their local machine and then try to print to the local printer...

Hey, thanks for replying,

The network printer is installed on the print server and is connected directly to the network with a NIC. It has a static IP address and we have it hooked up through dedicated print server.

Unfortunately, restarting the print spooler on either the local machine or the print server doesn't do anything. A complete uninstall/reinstall of the local printer (hooked up directly to the user's computer) seems to still be the only thing that does it.