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BillBrosius

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Domain Upgrade - Printing Slow

I am upgrading my users from a peer-to-peer network to a Windows 2003 domain enviornment.  I have an HP Laserjet 4250 network printer on the LAN that several users print large documents to.

Normally, users sending jobs to this printer find it very fast to spool and print.  Now, after joining the domain, they find the same print jobs take several minutes (5 or 10 or more minutes) to spool and print.

I can log into the computer locally and print a job without a problem.  I can then log into the same machine with domain authentication and the same print job can take 5 or six time longer to print.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
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Matt_Heuer

Is this printer on a server and then shared out to the workstations?  If it isn't, try giving that a shot.  Also, I have noticed that the HP laser printers using the PCL6 driver will print significantly slower at times.  Try using the PCL5 driver, that should fix your problem.
very odd situation, i am wondering if you have the printer published in AD.

how do you have the printer networked? internal NIC or installed locall on the server and shared?

check printer properties and make sure the printer is published in AD
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The printer has an internal nic and is using the printer software to facilitate sharing on the network.  It would not be possible to physically connect the printer to another computer to share.  The printer has no feature for adding it to our domain.  Can I still make it a domain object in AD?  Is that what you are referring to when you say "publish in AD"?  I have added the printer hostname to our DNS that serves our AD and that didn't help.

where is the printer software installed, is it locally on a machine on the network or is it 100% standalone?
The printer software gets installed to the local machine when they are configured for the printer.
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Trying that now.
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Ideally the printer would not be "shared" via any computer.  Each user would print to the printer directly.  That is they way it worked before upgrading the user to a domain and it worked fine.  Something changes after the user joins the domain.  Very frustrating!!

Thanks for all the suggestions though.  I am exploring all options.
its shared as its own entity but its must still be installed locally on a machine and therefore shared via that machine, ie, to connect to the printer, you still have to \\servername and then right click and connect, this has to be done, the printer with its own NIC is still its own entity though
Sharing the printer off a domain member seems to have improved the situation, but it still confuses me as to why it makes a difference.

Thanks guys.
no worries mate, its the way the the machines get published or "installed" in AD, if its an object that AD recognises everything can fly, if not then you start moving out of AD and everything slows down....