spool file takes really long time to reach printer 2

[afriend]

We run a small crd room using a win 2k pro machine to do most of the spooling. The crd room has multiple printers (cannon, oce, hp, etc). The issue I have is when I spool large quantites of graphics to a cannon iR110. The spool file ends up being about 400mb and it takes about 100 minutes to begin printing.

I tried spooling from a different win 2k pro box - it only takes about 40 minutes to begin printing. Same network segment, same printer driver, different nic.

I've tried reloading win 2k pro - but I still have same issues. I am at a loss to understand why it would work on one - but not the other. I also do not have the ability to use the "good" 2k pro station due to space and speed.

I tried multiple nic's and dowloaded current driver (3c905, 3c905b, intel pro 100, etc) so I do not believe it to be in hardware.

Any suggestions????

 

[DanD76]

In the Printer Properties under the Advanced tab, have you experimented with the "Spool print documents..., Start Printing immediately" option?
Or possibly the "Print directly to the printer" option? Although, this option may tie up the pc creating the print job.
Are these settings the same for both the good and bad computers?

Are the processor speeds and amount of RAM about the same for both the good and bad computers?
Are you using the latest printer drivers?

 

[afriend]

Yeah, I've tried that start printing immediately - but unfortunately to no end. The driver settings are the same - and the driver is identical to the "good" computer. The 2 pc's are as follows: "good" PIII 800mhz 1024 ram 800 mb free. "bad" P4 2.2ghz 1024 ram 60 gig free.

The driver provided by canon is 2 years old and according to ikon technicians - it is the only PCL driver they have for the iR110. We utilize a spooling program which we own the PCL portion (to add PS key would be +$16k). Unfortunately - the iR110 needs the entire spool file, which it then converts to PS for the engine to handle.

I am not sure if you are familiar with the iR110 - Heidleburg engine, canon badged, and a sun microsystems controller. Big sucker - but it handles 2 million pages each month.

 

[GuyThomas]

A wild guess, could you be short on disk space?

Any interesting messages in the event log?

 

[afriend]

There does not appear to be an issue with available disk space. I say this only because after a spool and before it leaves the print que I show about 800 mb avail. The prior post of mine was a bit wrong on the stats. about 1.6 gig free and the 3 files creatd during the spool take up about 800 mb - leaving me with the 800 mb avail.

Also - nothing unual in the event log. I see entries for print jobs but no warnings or error codes.

 

[bcastner]

In Printer and Faxes, right-click on the printer, Properties, Advanced, check that the priority is 1, and then click on Print Processor. Select winprint, RAW.

 

[afriend]

I looked at these properties - they are setup already as priority = 1 and winprint = RAW

Thank you all for your help - I'm not saying I'm done or that it is fixed - just saying thanks and I hope more replies come back....

 

[tomte]

First there are several issues with win2k and lpr. Check the two machines and see if one is using the standard TCP/IP port and the other is using UNIX printing services (lpr) Unix printing services which does not load standard with win2k is much faster than using lpr under the default TCP/IP port that loads. Load these services and then reload the current service pack and see if that improves the transmission performance. Second I would make sure that port 1024 < are opened up for printing this will improve small job performance on win2k. There is a default 4minute cycle time in windows if you are using up the default 721-731 ports for lpr. You can reference Microsoft's website for information. Third, and again I will refer you to Microsoft, the packet size for lpr was set too small in Win2K, this was supposedly taken care of in Service Pack 4, but I have found it to still be an issue in win2K. This will also improve transfer time. IF these do not satisfy you for your speed issues, then you can download from

http://www.brooksnet.com

intelliscribe which will give you a significantly faster lpr transfer from Windows. This does grab bandwidth on your network so be cautious. The issue really appears to be a windows issue, as transfer of Unix to Unix on these boxes do not seem to have the same performance hits. (reference Sun/Microsoft feud)
The 110 handles PCL natively, I am not sure which version of the driver you are using, but a new one for PCL was released within the last 60 days.

 

[tomte]

BTW afriend what state are you located in?

 

[afriend]

tomte

SoCal is where I am located - and BTW tomte - T H A N K Y O U for the help. I've got some work to see about your suggestions.

Also - the lpr port is 515 (settings are not by my choice but from vendor). They also require lpr byte count to be enabled.

 

[tomte]

Sounds as if you are using Standard TCP/IP. Load Unix Printing services. On win2k you load it on add/remove programs > windows components > other network file and print services. Use this instead for your lpr connection it is significantly faster. lpsched/lpd listens on for a connection on port 515 and responds back on 721-731 see RFC 1179. You can link to it on microsoft's website. 1024 and higher is out of strict RFC compliance, but for some reason Microsoft decided to hard code a 4 minute refresh time on these ports that cannot be modified in the registry. This means that if you have a lot of printers connected this way, or a lot of small byte size jobs, you can hang the win2k print spooler until these ports become available again. Opening up the 1024 range allows windows to use other ports, eliminating the problem.

Let me know if this corrects your issue. I would like to speak with your local support if you are willing to reveal your location here. I might have some influence in that area.

 

[JAFrank]

Did you ever get this fixed?

What version of System Software are you running on your iR110? If you are running one of the 5.x versions, there is a patch available for the machine that addresses this exact problem. At one of my customers, installing this patch reduced the spool time of a particular document from over 40 minutes to less than 1 minute.

Talk to your service tech and see if it applies.

Good luck!

JAFrank