We have a dozen or so HP printers, all different models some networked and some local. We are using PCL5 or PCL6 drivers downloaded from HPs website. When printing a PDF document it is extremely slow. You can hear the printer fire up and it spits out one page and then goes quiet. Anywhere from 2-5 seconds later it fires up again and spits out one more page and then goes quiet again. When we're printing large documents (often 50-100 pages) it takes for ever. I've downloaded PS drivers from HP's site and this corrects the adobe printing problem but then documents from Word, Excel, etc. don't print correctly. We get gibberish and formatting problems. I've setup alternate printers so each user can select the PS printer for adobe docs and the PCL version for everything else but this gets confusing to them so i'm looking for a better solution.
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PDF documents print very slow 1
- Thread starter BenJMF
- Start date
Michael52x
Technical User
there should not be any confusion if the users are knowledgable, and competent. Hire new people .Make sure that "lazy" is not one of their talents.
- Moderator
- #3
Michael: I don't think that firing everyone and hiring new staff is quite what BenJMF was looking for.
I have seen slow printing on PDF documents. Here are some things to try.
1) Make sure you're using the latest ADOBE reader.
2) Try turning off print spooling on the local machine and see if that helps.
Is the same problem occuring on both local and networked printers? Does it work better using PCL5 over PCL6?
Are you using a print server, where a server is spooling up print jobs? If so, is the SERVER also running the latest drivers?
Give us a little more to work with. There's 1001 things that can cause slow performance.
Oh... are you running Windows 2000? There was a "bug" in 2000 having to do with the available UDP ports that fixed a *lot* of problems once fixed at an installation I had.
Just my 2¢
"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify its owner." --Me
--Greg
- Thread starter
- #4
Greg,
Thanks for the suggestions.
We are using the current version of adobe.
I tried turning off the spooling but still the same results.
Same results on both networked and local printers.
PCL5 and PCL6 are both equally slow
We have all the networked printers setup on one of our servers and depending on where each user is in the building they are setup to print to the closest printer.
We're running XP Pro on all the work stations and Server 2003 on the server.
Thanks for the suggestions.
We are using the current version of adobe.
I tried turning off the spooling but still the same results.
Same results on both networked and local printers.
PCL5 and PCL6 are both equally slow
We have all the networked printers setup on one of our servers and depending on where each user is in the building they are setup to print to the closest printer.
We're running XP Pro on all the work stations and Server 2003 on the server.
- Moderator
- #5
BenJMF:
Here's a couple of things to try:
The second one solved problems with VERY slow printing at a client of mine. Turns out that LPR only uses ports 721-731... the registry fix allows it to use ALL ports over 1024. This fix sped up printing DRASTICALLY at the bank I consult for.
Just my 2¢
"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify its owner." --Me
--Greg
Here's a couple of things to try:
The second one solved problems with VERY slow printing at a client of mine. Turns out that LPR only uses ports 721-731... the registry fix allows it to use ALL ports over 1024. This fix sped up printing DRASTICALLY at the bank I consult for.
Just my 2¢
"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify its owner." --Me
--Greg
- Thread starter
- #6
I made the change suggested by the first link and it made a very slight difference, about 3 second between printed pages instead of 5.
I tried the steps in the second link but the LPDSVC\lpr doesn't exist in the registry. I even did a search for it to make sure I wasn't overlooking it.
I tried the steps in the second link but the LPDSVC\lpr doesn't exist in the registry. I even did a search for it to make sure I wasn't overlooking it.
- Thread starter
- #7
Something else I just noticed. I went to the print queue to cancel the print job after the last efforts didn't work and I noticed that the size was at 150MB/1.10GB and it was only at page 8 of 49. I checked the size of the PDF file and it is only 4.5 MB. So what is making the print job so huge when the document being printed isn't that large?
>> "So what is making the print job so huge when the document being printed isn't that large?"
There is no direct relationship between the size of a source document (encoded using the appropriate application-defined format - Word, Acrobat, ,etc.) and the size of the equivalent print stream (encoded using the appropriate printer page description language - PCL5, PCL XL, PostScript, etc.).
Where the print file is growing to enormous sizes, this probably signifies that the printer driver is unable to do relatively simple one-to-one mappings between objects in the source and target (print) streams.
I believe that this is quite common with PDF files, hence the reason why many people recommend use of PostScript drivers to print PDF files: PDF is a PostScript-based language, hence a much closer mapping between them.
There is no direct relationship between the size of a source document (encoded using the appropriate application-defined format - Word, Acrobat, ,etc.) and the size of the equivalent print stream (encoded using the appropriate printer page description language - PCL5, PCL XL, PostScript, etc.).
Where the print file is growing to enormous sizes, this probably signifies that the printer driver is unable to do relatively simple one-to-one mappings between objects in the source and target (print) streams.
I believe that this is quite common with PDF files, hence the reason why many people recommend use of PostScript drivers to print PDF files: PDF is a PostScript-based language, hence a much closer mapping between them.
Michael52x
Technical User
I do apologize to all. Very good advise guys!
I agree on the use of postscript for PDF files, and the issue of increased size is a real bugaboo.
Suggest not using XP drivers. 2000NT drivers will work well with server03. Hope this gets fixed for ya. Michael
I agree on the use of postscript for PDF files, and the issue of increased size is a real bugaboo.
Suggest not using XP drivers. 2000NT drivers will work well with server03. Hope this gets fixed for ya. Michael
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- #11
jwestpfahl
MIS
Look at this support knowledgebase article from Adobe.
Looks like PCL drivers are the problem.
Looks like PCL drivers are the problem.
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