Jetdirect and Metaframe 1.8

[Bob Hoffman_2]

I am using my Exchange server (5.5 sp5) with both Jetadmin and Webjet admin
installed. When printing to offsite locations through NT TSE SP5,MF1.8, print
jobs appear to be randomly causing the NT spooler to hang. All printers, both
local and remote use jetdirect cards. Printers are Okidata 590 or HP4000
series. Most print jobs are text based and small. The spooler problem may be
related to ISDN connection drops that we sometimes get. The drop may only last
a few seconds before connections are re-established. Users at these sites are
disconnected from TSE and need to log back on to resume. Rebooting the
Exchange server may allow one day of no problems but also may not. The print
spooler does not behave this way with the local network printers however some
printers, Okidatas(but not all of them)do not clear the print queue when done.
Restarting the spooler service will reprint those jobs if they are not manually
cleared first. This may be an unrelated problem to the spooler hanging
problem.
My remote sites also report slowness in the overall response time of all
programs run. Could this be a factor in printer performance?
Are the jetdirects not configured correctly. I have upgraded the firmware to
latest on some as a test, but no difference.

[Jamie Hughes_1]

Hello Bob,

Your problem may be related to a problem Microsoft recently documented titled,
"Print Jobs Randomly Stop Responding with HP JetDirect Printing", Q246462.

Since I don't have the details of your network, I'll pass this info along and
you can write us back with more details if this doesn't help. Since this
problem isn't happening locally, this article may apply. Do you have any idea
how many hops your clients are from the printer?

Here are the details:

Print jobs may randomly become stuck in the print queue and the spooler service
may need to be stopped and restarted several times a day. Using the JetAdmin
software to reestablish a connection also restarts print jobs.

The problem is most likely to occur when there are many router hops between the
printer and print server or there are a large number of printers per print
server. In large TCP/IP networks with many hops between printer and print
server, JetAdmin can have trouble maintaining a connection with the JetDirect
adapter.

As a workaround, either move the print server to the same network segment as
the printers, or use LPR printing instead of JetDirect printing.

Again, I don't know what your network looks like but if your printers and print
servers are on different segments, this could be the issue.

If you want to try and set up LPR printing instead of using JetDirect, there is
a Microsoft article on how you can do that - Q214798. Both of those articles
are available on Microsoft's website.

PS - the latest SP for Exchange 5.5 is SP3, :-)

You might also want to post your question in the Printing & Imaging Forum (on
the left a few choices down from Microsoft), or there is a Network Printing
Support Forum in the other HP Users Group forums. I'll send you the URL for
the support forums. Enter the site, select Network Printing, and then choose
from JetAdmin, WebJetAdmin, etc.

Regards,
Jamie Hughes