Odd printing problem since AD upgrade 1

[RichardMoran]

Hi,

I've just performed an upgrade of an NT domain to Active Directory, and have started experiencing an odd problem with printing. I'm not sure if the problem is AD, but the timing suggests it. I'm new to AD so you will have to excuse my lack of knowledge in this area!

Original config.
================

NT Domain with PDC and multiple BDCs (some are virtual machines on ESX servers)

XP clients using DHCP to pick up IP, WINS, Gateway, and ISP DNS addresses.

Upgrade steps
===============

1. Created new virtual NT BDC (DC01) and promoted to PDC.
2. Performed upgrade by installing Windows 2003 over NT.
3. Added AD, and DNS roles to DC01.
4. Created new virtual 2003 server (DC02) on second ESX server.
5. Added DNS role to DC02.
6. Configured replication of DNS from DC01 to DC02.
7. Configured DC02 to also hold Global Catalog

At this stage both servers were running without any errors in their event logs.

DHCP, and WINS were still running on an NT BDC at this stage. DHCP settings still set to original settings.

I thought that as we were running in mixed mode I would be able to test a few machines by giving them static addresses and testing DNS etc., while leaving the other clients with their original settings. This seemed to go smoothly.

That was on Thursday...

On Friday 13th (Oops!) we had some issues with some of the DHCP configured clients. They took longer to log on, and had a problem printing.

I checked the AD domain controllers and DC01 had some 1030, and 1058 event ids in the application log which indicated some sort of problem with the 'policies' folder. These entries were appearing every 5 minutes. After much searching I found a Microsoft page which took me through reapplying the permissions on the SYSVOL subfolders. This seemed to work as the errors stopped appearing.

While I was trying to resolve the event log errors, my colleague was checking out the clients. The main problem was with printing. If the client tried to print to a local printer it would take about 10 minutes before anything came out! The print would just sit there in the spooler all that time. Printing to network printers was fine. If we changed the properties of the printer to print 'direct to printer' they worked again. If we changed it back to using a spooler, then the problem came back.

If you logged off the client and logged back on locally to the PC, you could print to the spooler without any problems. The problem only appears when the user logs onto the network, and as it has only arisen since I've installed AD, I believe that must be causing the problem.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction, as I haven't been able to find anything useful on the Net?

Thanks

Rik

 

[basst]

Do you get this problem on all clients?
What OS are the clients running?
Is the printing application MS-DOS based?

 

[RichardMoran]

basst,

Thanks for your reply.

All clients are Windows XP with SP2. Problem only presents itself if client has local printer. In every case they were printing from standard Windows applications.

Logging onto the network as an Administrator and running test prints still produced the problem.

I wasn't sure if it was something to do with a default policy setting. I haven't set any policies up yet, and I was wondering if there is some default policy setting that may affect printing in this way. I just find it odd that the affected clients can print fine to network printers, but not to their local ones.

The key seems to be the fact that the problem only occurs when they log onto the network. If they log on locally everything works correctly. That would seem to indicate to me that some sort of policy or permission is being applied when they log on. The thing that confuses me is that the document will eventually come out, so it's not as if access to the local printer has been blocked.

Rik

 

[porkchopexpress]

Am i reading this corectly?

XP clients using DHCP to pick up IP, WINS, Gateway, and ISP DNS addresses.

Is you DHCP handing out your ISP's DNS address if so then this needs to be changed to point to DC01 which i think was your first DNS server, this server should then forward requests to your ISP's DNS server.

 

[RichardMoran]

Thanks Porkchopexpress, I've only just read your message, but I have already resolved the issue by changing the DNS settings as shown below. I'll give you a star anyway, but would really like to know why the printing to spooler/direct issues occurs anyway! I can't think of anything that connects it to DNS settings.

==================================

Apparently, changing the printing to 'direct' resolved the printing issue, but created a problem where people couldn't type more than a handful of characters before the cursor turned into an hourglass, and paused for a second or so.

I have now overcome both issues.

I stated in the question that the DHCP settings were still set to their original setting which would have included the ISPs DNS servers. Manually changing the DNS settings on a couple of PCs to point to the new AD servers running DNS has fixed the problem. I'll now change on DHCP as well.

I guess I had wrongly assumed that as we were running mixed mode, and still running WINS, I wouldn't need to update the client settings straight away. I wanted to test a few machines before I had everyone pointing to the new servers.

The machines do seem to take longer to log on, and seem to sit at 'Applying personal settings...' for a while. I look into this issue now, but I would be interested if anyone knows the reasoning behind the 'printing to spooler' issue.

Thanks

Rik

 

[porkchopexpress]

XP relies very heavily on DNS in a network environment and a misconfigured address will cause all sorts of odd issues, i must confess that i've not known it affect local printing before but it's not impossible that it was pausing on some sort of network call.

Mixed mode referes to the domain controllers rather than the clients it allows you to have NT4 DC's in a 2000/2003 domain.