Win Server 2008 as a print server troubleshooting

Windows Server 2008 as a print server platform is undoubtedly a very good choice, because it provides powerful print management capabilities to meet our various printing needs. However, because it is powerful, complex, and a system platform that is not so familiar to most administrators, it is cumbersome to troubleshoot printing failures. Many managers seem to be helpless and don't know where to start. This article will combine your own practice and draw on the experience of peers and netizens to summarize the printing troubleshooting ideas and steps under Windows Server 2008, and hope to help everyone.

From the user's point of view, the printing failure is nothing more than "everyone can't print", "some users can't print", "only one user can't print". The author below uses this as a clue to analyze the reasons for printing errors and talk about the corresponding troubleshooting ideas and steps.

1, everyone can't print

In this case, we can basically conclude that the problem with the printer itself is not a network problem. The troubleshooting ideas suggested by the author are:

(1). Routine inspection. We can check the printer in person. For Windows Server 2008, you can check the status of the printer through the printer's status page (enter the printer's IP address in the browser). If there are no problems, you should check the print server's event log and find printer-related error and warning messages from the log to determine the error.

(2). Check the print queue. Check if the printer is paused in the Print Service Manager, or if there is a document error. If this is the case, right-click on the documents and select the Cancel command to remove them. (Fig. 1)

(3). Check the printer configuration information. If someone maliciously sets the printer to dynamically obtain an IP address, or does not set a reservation for the printer. In this case, if the printer is turned off and restarted, it may be because the IP address changes and the print port points to the wrong IP address. In this regard, we also need to check the status of the subnet where the printer is located.

(4). Check the network. We can ping the printer's IP address with a ping command on a host. If the IP address of the printer cannot be pinged from any host, this indicates that the printer may be down or the network is disconnected. In addition, there may be a problem with the printer's network card failure or the switch or router connected to the printer.

(5). Retrieve changes to the printer configuration. You can ask or recall when the printer last printed normally and if the printer configuration changed. If the printer has never worked properly, it means there is a problem with the initial configuration. If the configuration of the printer changes, it is recommended to revert to the previous configuration. If you suspect that it is related to the printing device, we can try to uninstall and reinstall the printer driver.

(6). Detect disk space. This is usually ignored by everyone, and it is necessary to check the available space on the disk where the spool folder is located, as it can also cause printing problems. If the available space on the partition is low, or there is no free space, the print server will not be able to create a spool file, so the document will not print. In addition, we should also check the permissions settings of the print folder. If there is a problem with the permission settings, background printing will not work. (Fig. 2)

(7). Detect print processor and split page settings. Make sure that the print processor and split page settings are correct. If the wrong print processor is set, the printer may print garbled characters or print at all. For Windows Server 2008, we can try to use RAW data types or EMF data types, which will generally solve the problem. If the split page is set incorrectly, the printer may print only the contents of the split page or it will not print at all. Therefore, we also want to check the settings of the split page.

(8). Check the Print Spooler service. Set the service to start automatically with the system, but if the service attempts to initiate two consecutive failures within 1 minute after the system is started, the Print Spooler service will no longer attempt to restart. At the same time, if there is a wrong document in the printing team and cannot be removed, it may cause the Print Spooler service to fail. In this case, we can first clear the error document from the print team, then open the print service console where it finds the Print Spooler service to start it manually. (Figure 3)

2, some users can't print

This situation is expressed as some users can print, but some users can't print. For such printing failures, we have come down to three reasons: improper print permission settings, application-induced printing errors, and network-induced printing errors. Then, our troubleshooting can be done from the following aspects:

(1). Network detection. In this case, the network detection is different from the first method. We can choose to detect other users in a subnet when the user encounters the printing error problem. The detection method is still using the Ping command. Execute the "ping PrinterIP" command at the Windows Server 2008 command prompt, where PrinterIP is the printer's IP address. If any computer from this subnet cannot ping the printer's IP address, this indicates that the switch or router between the user's computer and the printer has failed or is disconnected. At this time, we put the focus of troubleshooting on the router or switch for machine detection or configuration check.

(2). Permission check. The permissions here mainly refer to the permissions settings of the printer and the permissions settings of the spool folder to ensure that specific users or groups of users have access rights. If the permissions are set incorrectly, background printing will not work and printing will be wrong.

(3). Detect the print processor. If the system type of the client in the domain or in the LAN is different, it is necessary to detect the print processor. Because Windows 98 and Windows me based clients can only print using the RAW data type print processor. Printing based on the RAW data type is handled on the client, so the print server is required to process the least amount of work; and the EMF data type needs to be sent to the large print server for processing. If you encounter this type of error, we can modify the default data type of the printer. Open the printer's Properties dialog, switch to the Advanced tab, and click the Print Processor button to open a dialog where we can change the current print processor and the default data type. (Fig. 4)

(4). Check the program for printing. If there is a problem with the configuration of the application that calls the printer for printing, it can also cause a print failure. For this we can recheck the configuration of the print program to see if there is something wrong with the configuration. For example, if the default printer selected is incorrect, it will cause such a printing error.

(5). Check the printing error message. Pay special attention to the error messages generated during the printing process, which is a powerful clue to our troubleshooting. For example, if the client encounters an error message when connecting to the printer saying that the printer driver must be installed, this means that the correct driver is installed on the print server, but it is not available on the client. In this regard, we must manually update the client's print driver.

3, only one user can't print

If only one user can't print, it means that the problem is not big, but it is not easy to troubleshoot. This is usually caused by software, the user's computer, or improper permissions. For such errors, it is recommended that the user restart the computer and re-print the test. If not, you can troubleshoot from the following aspects:

(1). Check the program for printing. Similar to the above, we first check to see if there is a configuration error in the application that called the printer. In addition, we have checked the default settings of the user settings for errors.

(2). Check the user's computer. First check if the Print Spooler service is running normally if the user is a computer system, and if not, manually start the service. Also, check if the user's computer disk has enough temporary space to generate the initial spool file. Also, start other important services on your computer. If there is a problem with the related service, you need to start it manually. If you can't start it, you need to troubleshoot the service, and always make sure it starts normally. In general, we set the service to start automatically, and then restart the system to solve the problem.

(3). Check the network connection. Check and confirm that the user's computer can connect to other resources over the network. Usually we test the host to printer connectivity by pinging the command.

(4). Check the error message. Similar to the above method, we should pay attention to the received printing error information, for example, the client receives the "access denied" error message, which indicates that there is a problem with the permission setting, we can modify the printing permission accordingly.

(5). Check the permission settings. Again, we also check the printer's permission settings to confirm that the user is denied access. Also, make sure that the user has access to the spool folder.