Random print problems

What OS your Client Machines have? Are they Win 7 / Win XP? 32 or 64 Bit?

On your Windows Server 2008 R2 you must have installed drivers according to Server OS, but have you installed Drivers according to client OS?

You must have those set of drivers as well. Also please check the Network Cable connected to the printer which could be at fault causing Print Jobs to fail.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/cc732946.aspx

Is it possible that you have an IP conflict? To check, wait until the printer fails again. Then unplug it from the network and see if you can still ping its IP address.

you can do a hardwre reset, to defaults- it can help too

All clients are win 7 32bit, and I do have the additional drivers installed. I have also verified all cables integrity (power and network).

This printer has a static IP assigned outside of the DHCP range, and I also verified that there were no other clients trying to use that same IP.

What is the make/model of the printer? And is it the same as any of your other 6 that function properly?

This is a Kyocera KM-2550, and yes it is the same as the others.

what happens if you swap the printer with a working one?  does the problem follow the printer or not?

these are large multi-function machines, it's not a simple matter of swapping from one dept. to another for a test. That would cause an interruption worse than what I'm currently dealing with.

Do the print jobs just remain in the printer's queue or don't jobs make it to the queue?
What do you have set on the advanced properties page of the printer under spool settings?
Do you 'start printing immediately' or wait until the last page is spooled? Default I think is start printing immediately. I've had issues with certain types of jobs from specific apps where I had to pick "wait until the last page is spooled".

well -  you don't have to swap them physically - just swap the connection at the switch; you may also have to swap the ip address

ZabagaR - The print jobs do remain in queue, and I have 'Start Printing Immediately' checked. (is defualt BTW). The behavior is almost as if the driver were not installed or became corrupted on the users PC. I suspected that the GP refresh was causing this because of the timing and interval of the problem. the users would suddenly get an error message that the print jobs failed to print. But as I said, all I had to do was logon to the server and print a test page and that would clear it up for the users to print again.

i've swapped the cables, reinstalled the driver on the pc's both manually and also allowed GP to install for me. I've also recreated the GPP for it.

Nobus - this is why I don't think that the swap would have any effect, I'm sure it would follow.

agreed, since you did it already..
since it looks now like a printer problem, i would reset it to factory settings

Something interesting has happened- I had to take one of the affected PC's out to replace a failing MOBO, and while it was out, this problem went away. Now that I've put the fixed PC back in service, the problem has now reappeared......

I don't understand why it would just now start to have problems after running fine for years,  but could this be power issues if all these machines share the same electrical circuit as the printer? or more likely something with the driver on that particular pc....

>>  Now that I've put the fixed PC back in service, the problem has now reappeared.  <<  then this pc is the source of the problem
did you use the same disk drive? or image it?
if possible, try a fresh install

it was just a MOBO swap, the HDD was not changed. But I'm going to start by re-installing driver and looking around from there.

that's what i said  - the disk contains the problem in the PC
was it the same model mobo?  probably not, since you are reinstalling drivers

yes it was the same, I have a fleet of like Dell pc's. I'm going to completely rip out that driver from print mgmt, and reinstall as a start to see if that might make and difference. I'll reformat as a last resort.

if this post was the solution, why only a B grade Truckguys?
grading on EE is not like in school, see in help section  on closing questions for more info

hey, thanks...