I have a windows 2008 cluster that users are experiencing very slow printing. When i check the spool folder, I see some files in there. I tried restarting the spool service, failover to passive and clearing out the queue but files stay there for a while before they clear out. The printing is very slow. Any idea?

Hi Jon, I have seen some cases; the firewall component of the antivirus software such as Symantec, Mcafee etc might cause similar delay issues. The slow performance can have different reason. You should check the mentioned below points. Please try uninstalling AV temporarily and test whether this will make any difference. Also check that all required paths are excluded for AV scans. If 3rd party printer drivers are not fully supported in clustered environment. So please ensure right driver is installed and there would not be multiple copies of driver available for print cluster. These are the most common reason why the spooler performance is slow on print server If the clients start his PC, his print monitor will try to connect to the print monitor on the print cluster. And if you have in example 500 users the spooler will try to give a status update to the whole clients. The performance will decrease and a hang can occur. Also check if your facing this issue with some specific kind of printers HP, Canon or Xerox etc, try printing with some other printer and ensure right compatible drivers. I do not know much detail about your environment so putting the pointers above probably helpful for you to understand some root causes. So keep on writing for any further assistance. Regards, Tilak IT Consultant

not much errors but did get this warning Log Name: System Source: srv Date: 9/11/2010 4:24:32 PM Event ID: 2012 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: Description: While transmitting or receiving data, the server encountered a network error. Occassional errors are expected, but large amounts of these indicate a possible error in your network configuration. The error status code is contained within the returned data (formatted as Words) and may point you towards the problem. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="srv" /> <EventID Qualifiers="32768">2012</EventID> <Level>3</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-09-11T23:24:32.359Z" /> <EventRecordID>1271993</EventRecordID> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer></Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>\Device\LanmanServer</Data> <Binary>0000040001002C0000000000DC07008000000000840100C00000000000000000000000000000000087050000</Binary> </EventData> </Event>

Are there any errors in the event logs?

hi I do not have any antivirus installed on the print server. All my clients are xp machines. Whenever printing is slow, I do notice an abnomal amount of I/O on the local disks and resource monitor is showing that the clusdb is heavily in use for both read and write. I think the clussvc.exe process is very busy. I have tried failing over to passive node, restarting spooler service and all dont seem to help. Clients are able to print but very very slow printing. And the server response time is very sluggish (not memory or cpu) but disk I/O.

Hi, Thanks for the post. Please check if the following article will help you on this issue http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979394 Thanks, MilesPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

WE updated all drivers. Still extremly slow on the cluster. Memory and cpu is just fine, network too. slow on both passive and active node. and bring up printer properties on a printer from a client takes a long time to bring up the window.

i noticed the local disk are very busy.

once I start the print spooler service from cluster manager, it starts be become very slow and disk activity very busy. once that is stopped its ok

any idea on this? This is a very serious issue. We are on 2008 not R2 64bit

We are having the same issue Has any one any ideas, Could it be a patch ??

Hello We are having the same situation. We installed the latest universal drivers but still many or most of the printers are slow to see their properties, or to print. Does anyone have an answer other than updating printer drivers?

Hi, Im guessing you dont have your network drivers set to auto negotiate? This can sometimes cause issues whilst printing. I'd recommend hardcoding all network interfaces.