Printer Problems

[Clarence]

I'm having this weird printer problem. See Attachment preview. I've installed this network printer to service about 15 PC's. However, there are times when i will get called by an employee saying they cannot print. I check the devices and the shadow printer shows up. Sometimes two or three other printers that resembles the same network printer i try clearing the print spooler this sometimes help. But some of the times another of the shadow printers are automatically selected to print.

Reinstalling the printer and its driver solves the problem. But i have to do this so often!! Is there some other way I can diagnose the printer.

 

[atomichybrid]

Are the 15 computers individually networked to the printer? or are they connected to a print server? If its the former, it creates a lot of hassle as you would be working to fix on nearly all of them. If its the latter then you just have to fix the one computer and the rest of the other computers will follow suit.

Better to share the printer than managing every other computer. Thats my opinion though.

 

[Clarence]

Are the 15 computers individually networked to the printer?

It's not on a print server. But the printer is shared among all the pcs in the office. I'm probably going to contact HP directly if I don't get help here...

 

[atomichybrid]

It's not on a print server. But the printer is shared among all the pcs in the office. I'm probably going to contact HP directly if I don't get help here...

So you mentioned the network printer is shared. Am I correct in assuming that the network printer is hooked up to a switch and then the other 15 computers have the same connection to that switch? Do some of the computers print files at the same time?

If this is the case then I think the network printer is being overloaded with printing jobs, you have to remember the network card, RAM and the processor of the network printer is not state of the art to handle large operations.

That's my thought on it though, could be wrong.

 

[Clarence]

yes it's shared but not on a print server. it is connected to the domain via a rj-45 wall outlet and manually added by each pc's to print from. The daily workload of the printer is not a problem so RAM is not an issue. It is not burdened with a workload. The problem is the shadow printer that is added an automatically..............