Print Job Continuously Restarts Spooling But Never Prints (165506)
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
This article was previously published under Q165506 SYMPTOMS
When you print to a line printer remote (LPR) printer port from Windows
NT, print jobs may not print, and you may experience the following
symptoms:
- The print job may appear to spool, then restart and spool from the
beginning. This behavior continues until it is cancelled.
- The print job hangs in the queue with an error status.
- The print job hangs in the queue with a spooling status
CAUSE
This is caused by the idle-timeout setting on the printer's TCP/IP
settings being set too low. The default setting is 90 seconds. When this
value is set to an extremely low number, such as 1, the printer will
respond to the computer sending the print job with a frame size of zero.
This can be seen in a network trace by checking the Window setting in the
TCP portion of the printer's acknowledgement frame. That number is the
largest frame size the printer will accept.
RESOLUTION
Increase the TCP/IP idle-timeout setting using the printer's control panel
or by using a telnet session. The default setting is 90.
Consult your JetDirect manual for information on how to make this change.
If the setting is low enough to cause this problem, it may be extremely
difficult to use a telnet session to make the change, since the session
will constantly time-out before the commands can be entered.
MORE INFORMATION
The different symptoms appear according to how the printer responds. If
the printer responds with a zero Window size but does not include the
Reset flag, the server will hang in an error state until the printer
responds with a larger window size. In the trace you can see the server
retrying the connection, and the printer responding with an
acknowledgement, but still with the zero Window size.
If the printer responds with a zero Window size, but does not include the
reset flag, the server will re-spool the job and try again from the
beginning. In the printer window, the job will spool to its full size,
sit for a moment, then start spooling over again, until it is canceled.
| Modification Type: | Major | Last Reviewed: | 2/25/2002 |
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| Keywords: | kb3rdparty kbprb kbprint KB165506 |
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