Vista Network Printing speed issue

grasscutter

Hi

I currently have eircom broadband and connect to my dsl modem/router via wireless over 802.11 g from my laptop that runs Vista. Yesterday I purchased a wifi enabled printer and set it up so I could print via wireless from my laptop.

The basic problem is when I print even the smallest document it takes 3 minutes before the document prints.eg open notepad and type the word test and then select print and it will take 3 minutes before the printer seems to recieve the request and starts printing. The printer is a Lexmark 3500-4500 series. Does anybody have any idea how I could fix this?

I dont seem to have any other connectivity issues from my laptop to the router and my connection speed to the internet runs at around 1.6Mbps. My connection speed to the router runs at the full 54 Mbps
Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

cheers

grasscutter

Karoma

Confirm: It takes 3 mins. approx. before the light starts to flash on the printer/or any other indication on the printer that it's doing anything? Does it say it's "processing" the job or whatever for 3 minutes? That'd suggest it's more likely to be an issue on the PC side of things.
What spec. is your PC?
Did you install the driver from the CD or the web? Have you checked for a later driver?
What are the driver settings?
Check the Printer Properties - is it set to LPR or RAW?
Spooling(Advanced tab)-> Set to print immediately.
Check task manager while you're sending a job to print - what's the CPU and memory usage?

grasscutter

thanks for your reply

Karoma wrote: »

Confirm: It takes 3 mins. approx. before the light starts to flash on the printer/or any other indication on the printer that it's doing anything? Does it say it's "processing" the job or whatever for 3 minutes? That'd suggest it's more likely to be an issue on the PC side of things.

I tested that last night and the printer does absolutly nothing and then after 3 minutes a Lexmark printer dialog pops up on my desktop saying starting printing and then heh presto the printer kicks into life and the printing starts

Karoma wrote: »

What spec. is your PC?

pretty new spec
InspironTM 1721 (N1272105)
AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile technology TL-58, Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English. 2GB of memory, 320 Gb drive

Karoma wrote: »

Did you install the driver from the CD or the web? Have you checked for a later driver?
What are the driver settings?
Check the Printer Properties - is it set to LPR or RAW?
Spooling(Advanced tab)-> Set to print immediately.
Check task manager while you're sending a job to print - what's the CPU and memory usage?

I installed the driver from the cd. I think I will check the Lexmark website for any updates
I will confirm the driver settings after I try and update the driver
Not too sure where printing settings are set to LPR or RAW.
Under advanced settings the config was already set to print immediately but when i tried to change the setting anyway I got an error message about invalid memory locations (with the memory specified in hex in the error message).
I checked the task manager and there was nearly zero cpu usage and not any remarkable memory usage at the time of the print.

I think the error message changing print config is the crux issue so I will try and reinstall and update the driver (maybe look for a Vista specific one )and maybe repost when i find out more

cheers

grasscutter

Feelgood

Get the IP address of your printer... 192.168.x.x and ping it from your PC.

Please post the results of the ping test...

grasscutter

Feelgood wrote: »

Get the IP address of your printer... 192.168.x.x and ping it from your PC.

Please post the results of the ping test...

thanks for the reply

I will try that tonight

grasscutter

Feelgood wrote: »

Get the IP address of your printer... 192.168.x.x and ping it from your PC.

Please post the results of the ping test...

the ping stats are

Pinging 192.168.1.7 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.1.7: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=254
Reply from 192.168.1.7: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254
Reply from 192.168.1.7: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254
Reply from 192.168.1.7: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.7:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 6ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 13ms

grasscutter

Hi mods

from what I can see my issue seems to be a general problem with trying to print to a network printer from a laptop/desktop running Vista. The recurring theme from reading about similar issues seems to be the anti virus and firwall blocks *some* attempt to contact the internet after the print initiates (program might be presumed to be a trojan or something ). A print (spool?) service loops and then eventually times out and the print job then goes through after a couple of minutes. A solution I have come across is to trick Vista into thinking the printer is a local printer. I am going to try that tonight.

In the meantime would it be possible for you to move the thread into a more suitable forum... perhaps Windows.... and maybe rename the thread to Vista Network Printing speed issue

irlrobins

Done

gerryok1

Hi, can anyone help, I installed a Lexmark printer, wireless 3500 4500 series. It will print fine with the USB in but wireless printing is an issue. It installed perfectly stating it picked up my wireless network etc.
I am getting an error message communication failed. Checked firewall settings etc..