win98 clients all have printing problems in morning

[Matt]

sbs2000 network, new server (happened before new server aswell).

2 hubs uplinked on 2 floors.

win98 clients...outlook 2000.

Customer comes in first thing turns on a computer with shared usb colour
printer....goes to her pc boots...goes into outlook and tries to print email
to her own local brother printer....hangs ... egg timer....another pc is
turned on....tries to print to her local printer email or word and egg timer
as soon as selects FILE, PRINT.
Meanwhile first pc same thing when prints to colour laser.....and then the
other pc does not have a list of printers at all.

Some clients upstairs ok.....but the other day one user upstairs had same
problem printing from outlook 2000.

Takes a number of reboots and eventually things get back to normal.

It seems to have problems printing from word also once it happens.

Looked at temp files, journaling in outlook, win98 profiles were on server
no locally so no temp print files are keep on server.
Ran adaware , Trend Officescan client upto date on each pc.

They installed months ago Adobe Acrobat full version that adds a type of
printer port in printers folder.....one common thing on all clients.

Checked cabling,,,,,reset hubs,checked patch cables......network will work
fine for a week then this problem will start again.....

Going to look at spooler temp files etc....looks like a local problem but
then affects numerous users !!!!!!! arrrrhhhhhhh. confusing.

Need help !!!!......should be changing win98 clients to xp soon but customer
worried that same thing will happen after spending on new server also.

Cheers Matt

[Greg Evensen]

Matt,
You can verify if it's a port monitor problem, print out of
notepad while the printer is paused. If the job ends up in the
printer queue, then you have a port monitor problem. Office
products (among others) tend to interact with the spooler
components before the print dialog even comes up.

You can forcible remove port monitors from the system by deleting
key entries in the registry at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Print\Monitors

Make sure you back up the whole Monitors key first.
Windows 98 requires a reboot and Windows NT, etc, only
requires a restart of the [print] spooler service.

I'm not sure anymore, but Adobe products used to check for
duplicate serial numbers on the network...

The only machines that need the USB port monitor are the ones
that physically have the printer attached, but the driver
installer will install it even on computers that only use
it from the network.

Greg

"Matt" > wrote in message >...
> sbs2000 network, new server (happened before new server aswell).
>
> 2 hubs uplinked on 2 floors.
>
> win98 clients...outlook 2000.
>
> Customer comes in first thing turns on a computer with shared usb colour
> printer....goes to her pc boots...goes into outlook and tries to print email
> to her own local brother printer....hangs ... egg timer....another pc is
> turned on....tries to print to her local printer email or word and egg timer
> as soon as selects FILE, PRINT.
> Meanwhile first pc same thing when prints to colour laser.....and then the
> other pc does not have a list of printers at all.
>
> Some clients upstairs ok.....but the other day one user upstairs had same
> problem printing from outlook 2000.
>
> Takes a number of reboots and eventually things get back to normal.
>
> It seems to have problems printing from word also once it happens.
>
> Looked at temp files, journaling in outlook, win98 profiles were on server
> no locally so no temp print files are keep on server.
> Ran adaware , Trend Officescan client upto date on each pc.
>
> They installed months ago Adobe Acrobat full version that adds a type of
> printer port in printers folder.....one common thing on all clients.
>
> Checked cabling,,,,,reset hubs,checked patch cables......network will work
> fine for a week then this problem will start again.....
>
> Going to look at spooler temp files etc....looks like a local problem but
> then affects numerous users !!!!!!! arrrrhhhhhhh. confusing.
>
> Need help !!!!......should be changing win98 clients to xp soon but customer
> worried that same thing will happen after spending on new server also.
>
> Cheers Matt