print spooler locks up

Hello,
I have a Color LaserJet 3550 printer connected via a High speed USB port to
my SBS2003 Standard Edition. When in power save mode, due to the beginning
of a new business day and no print outs were required yet. I went to print
an email from my Outlook client program via XP Pro workstation. The print
hung in the print properties (I believe it's called a print spooler) and
nothing happened. Hit the print button and it just added it to my the
already existing print job requested. I tried deleting all print jobs from
the spooler to retry but the original print job would not repond and
would'nt delete. I shut down all workstations and noticed on the original
workstation that I originally started the print command from I received an
"Explorer did not respond error" before she tried to shut down. I logged
into the SBS2003 box. I couldn't delete the original print job and tried to
restart the print spooler service getting an error message "Could not start
the Print spooler Services Error 1053 . The service did not respond to the
start or control request in a timely fashion. " I eventually rebooted the
machine and it hung up on the first reboot. Mouse locked and nothing but a
gray display! Ultimately hit the cold reset button and she started without
failure. Nothing is stated in any of the event logs. What's up with this??
I'm stumped. Do not want this to happen again. How can I avoid shutting down
the network for this same issue in the future, also any other suggestions
would be humbly appreciated. This whole LAN is up todate virus protected and
scanned daily. Thanks for your response.

Joey

There are a lot of things that can cause a job to hang in the queue. It
could be that something didn't wake the printer up from powersave (you could
check this at the printer if it happens again). I've got two LaserJets
where certain PDF documents hang the printer if using a PostScript driver.
Anyway, what you need to do is to narrow this down. I see three
possibilities - a fluke that won't happen again, your e-mail message has a
problem that's keeping it from printing to that printer, or a problem
printing when the printer is in powersave.

Probably what I would do is to get the printer off its direct USB connection
to the server and onto a dedicated print server. I'm not familiar with the
3550, but you can probably get a jetdirect card for it, or use an external
HP or other brand print server. For USB, I've used a fair number of HP
Jetdirect 175X print servers quite happily for serveral years, and there are
many other options out there.


"Joe" <jbcandullo(nospam)@mmadisonservices.com> wrote in message
news:Od8%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hello,
> I have a Color LaserJet 3550 printer connected via a High speed USB port
> to my SBS2003 Standard Edition. When in power save mode, due to the
> beginning of a new business day and no print outs were required yet. I
> went to print an email from my Outlook client program via XP Pro
> workstation. The print hung in the print properties (I believe it's called
> a print spooler) and nothing happened. Hit the print button and it just
> added it to my the already existing print job requested. I tried deleting
> all print jobs from the spooler to retry but the original print job would
> not repond and would'nt delete. I shut down all workstations and noticed
> on the original workstation that I originally started the print command
> from I received an "Explorer did not respond error" before she tried to
> shut down. I logged into the SBS2003 box. I couldn't delete the original
> print job and tried to restart the print spooler service getting an error
> message "Could not start the Print spooler Services Error 1053 . The
> service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely
> fashion. " I eventually rebooted the machine and it hung up on the first
> reboot. Mouse locked and nothing but a gray display! Ultimately hit the
> cold reset button and she started without failure. Nothing is stated in
> any of the event logs. What's up with this?? I'm stumped. Do not want this
> to happen again. How can I avoid shutting down the network for this same
> issue in the future, also any other suggestions would be humbly
> appreciated. This whole LAN is up todate virus protected and scanned
> daily. Thanks for your response.
>
> Joey
>