Print jobs getting interspersed with one another

[boomerang]

We've got an HP Laser printer here that about 15 of us print to on a frequent basis. Our print jobs are getting all jumbled together. We've got to pick through the stack to find our sheet or sheets. It's a real PITA. It's too easy to walk off with someone else's print job in the middle of your stack, etc.

I don't know if this is a spooler setting, something that can be corrected at the print server level, each individual machine or what. I've looked through the menu's on the printer itself, and I see no means of printing each job to completion before starting another.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Cooky]

We too have the same problem w/ an HP LaserJet. Please post if anyone knows a solution.

 

[Fardringle]

Are you printing directly to the printer's IP address, or are you going through a print server?

If you are going through a print server, set the printer properties on the server to "Start printing after the last page is spooled" and "Print spooled documents first" on the Advanced tab. Depending on the printer you may or may not also have to do this on each workstation.

If you are printing directly to the IP address of the printer, then you will have to set the above spooler setting on each individual workstation.


This setting will tell the computer to hold on to all pages of a print job until the entire print job has been received, then print all of the pages of the job at the same time.

I have seen cases where even with the spooler set properly you still get mixed up print jobs. Many computers trying to print directly to the printer at the same time can still cause problems even with the spooler configured properly on all of the computers because they are fighting for the ability to talk to the printer and sometimes can't get their entire print job sent to the printer before someone else starts sending their own print jobs.

If this is the case, your best bet would be to install a dedicated print server (use ONE machine to share the printer to all other computers on the network) and let the print server manage things so that you don't have individual PCs trying to "butt in line" ahead of a print job that is already running. Depending on how many PCs you have and how often they send print jobs, your existing server or even possibly one of the workstations might be able to handle this responsibility in addition to whatever else they are already doing.

 

[boomerang]

It looks as though we're printing to the IP of the printer. I suppose it could be the IP of a print server somewhere, but I did not think to check the IP of the port on my workstation against the label on the printer.

They've been rolling out new computers (3 year cycle) and have neglected to give the users with the new machines enough privileges to change spooler settings. Several of us still have older hardware and I changed them, but without changing them all, the endeavor is worthless.

Thanks for the help, you were right on target.