I had a problem with a newly installed server that was the print server for about 12 – 15 printers.
The printers were dotted around the site and connected to Intel print servers themselves to allow them to be available on the network.
It was reported to me that the server repeatedly stopped allowing you to print and it was true, when I checked the spooler service, it had stopped.
After examining the event log, I found the following information messages appear every 6 seconds:
Printer \\server\printer was set.
This was cycling through around 6 printers – and possibly meant a lot of network and server bandwidth was being chewed up.
All of the printers connected happened to be Brother 1230 or Brother 1430 printers. Oddly, the Brother 1240 printers were unaffected (possibly because they were series 40).
Anyway, after poking around the printer settings and the registry, I found the problem to be that the printers were using the native Brother print processor.
To remedy:
- Open Printers and Faxes
- Right-click on the printer and click Properties
- Click the ‘Avanced’ tab
- Click ‘Print Processor…
- Select WinPrint and RAW
- Press ‘OK’ and ‘OK’
Now go back to the settings and check that the print processor is still using WinPrint. If it is not, you also need to disable ‘Advanced Print Services’ in the ‘Advanced’ tab.