Network printers going crazy

[Salesmonkey]

One of the major platforms my department is using is a web-based data aggregator that culls client data from a bunch of databases, organizes it into a form, and presents this for printing as a .pdf file.

With at least two of the network printers, they will print the first four pages of a report and then go to gibberish- pages of random characters or numbers.

If we break the print job down into 4-page lots, we can get the job done. pages 1-4. Pages 5-8. Pages 9-13, etc.

The admins say there's nothing wrong with the print server and quit whining. I've replaced the drivers on the machines of people showing this error- went to mmc and print services, deleted the local print drivers, reinstalled the printers and downloaded the fresh drivers from the print server. Same issue.

But from my boss's computer printing to the network printer assigned to our group - no problems.

Any suggestions on where to look to fix this? Thanks.

[dalesys]

Wild ass guess: Running out of RAM/HD space on those printers?

(Need more Bufferin™)

[Pedersen]

Sounds like you've got a case of some problem throwing happening (pet term I have for "Not my problem, so you deal with it!").

Possible issues that are occurring:

1. A bug exists in the code that makes the PDF. Is this your company's code? Or open source? Can any developers look into it to figure it out? Can you print long documents from other programs (Word, Excel, etc)?
2. These are network printers, but you are using print servers. Is there any chance you could map directly to one of the printers, bypassing the server? In Windows, you can add a new IP based printer, talk directly to it, and bypass any print server in the middle. This will definitively tell you if the print server is the issue.
3. If these are not IP printers, can you take one of them offline temporarily, hook it up locally, and test print from there?
4. The PDF viewing application could be out of date. Have you checked to see if a newer version exists?
5. The printer drivers could be out of date. Have you checked to see if a newer version exists?
6. Is the problem consistent for everybody? Or do some people work all the time, while others never work? If so, analyze the lists of installed software for differences. Also analyze the print settings in use for differences.

Those are what I can think of. Hope this helps with troubleshooting. If it still doesn't resolve it, post back your findings, and hopefully that will trigger some additional ideas on how to fix things.

[Sandman]

what kind of printer are you using.. and what version of adobe are you using. sometimes the driver IN the machine is not compatable with adobe. i know that is the issue with some of the canon laser machines with the newest adobe.

[Andara Bledin]

I cannot tell you how often I run into problems with Acrobat.

More often than not it has to do with how the pdf was created (I've run into way more than my fair share of people who don't know crap about how to create a proper pdf), but there's always a good chance that there's something tweaky about the version of Acrobat used, the version of Acrobat reading it, the Adobe drivers for Acrobat, or some combination of the three.

My partner and I created a small sign for our hobby business in Acrobat. It looked great on his screen. We took the file to Kinko's and it looked great on their screen. They sent it to the printer, and it somehow managed to lose half of the masks for the letters, so they came out grey instead of patterned. So they took the file, moved to the next computer over, which had the same installation specs as the first and printed it again. This time it worked just fine.

^-.-^

[Imprl59]

Location varies depending on your version of Adobe but in the lower left of the print window there will be an advanced option. Open that and click the "print as image" checkbox and see if it prints. I've had this fix a lot of weird Adobe print issues for me.

[Sandman]

Salesmonkey, most of the MFD's that have been around for a few years don't play nicely with the "generic" PDF's, and not those that are made from the Adobe product. That could be the issue.

[Daskinor]

I have had allot of success downgrading to PCL5 drivers. Most of the time the PDF creation is crap so you just need to figure why and how to get around it.

Want to know hell, try printing a DWF converted to a PDF.

[Sakka]

Location varies depending on your version of Adobe but in the lower left of the print window there will be an advanced option. Open that and click the "print as image" checkbox and see if it prints. I've had this fix a lot of weird Adobe print issues for me.

Thank you for posting this, this tip has helped immensely with a network printer I've been banging my head against at a site for far too long now.
The client still needs to fully test it with the next big package to print, but the initial test went great.



*as machine sits silent for a minute or two after receiving the print job*
client: Hmm, doesn't seem any faster.
client: *starts going on about how it takes over a half hour to print a 100 page packet, that six or seven copies need to be made, etc*
*machine suddenly spits out the ten test pages from a previous packet in rapid succession*
client: Okay. That was fast. Won't be able to test fully until the next packet, but, that was fast.

[wolfie]

Salesmonkey, most of the MFD's that have been around for a few years don't play nicely with the "generic" PDF's, and not those that are made from the Adobe product. That could be the issue.

That sounds to me like the older MFDs used a postscript interpreter they got from Adobe. Could the interpreter have included code to check the header of the PDF to see which program generated it, and deliberately mis-printed any that came from a non-Adobe product? Shades of the old "DOS isn't done 'till Lotus won't run".

[Salesmonkey]

Problem Solved!

Thanks everybody for your help! I'm also glad this thread maybe helped others, like Sakka's image printing issue.

Our network is ... finicky... so I'm not going to swear that this was what solved the issue, though they were co - incidental.

The admin that doesn't keep us techs in the dark said (admitted) that one of the drivers in the PCL 6 package for this printer wasn't check-summing properly. They replaced this driver on the print server and we re-installed the printer on the affected machines.

And the people of the Shire rejoiced.