Slow printing to shared printer from terminal services

printingshared-printerswindows-server-2008

  • A printer (LaserJet P1006) connected
    to a Windows XP workstation is shared
    to the network.

  • The user is connected to the printer
    from a Server 2008 terminal services
    session. (Local printer redirection
    via RDP is not used, because the
    printer name is not stable — a
    requirement for some software.)

  • This is a small network with thin clients and workstations used primarily as thin clients. There is no domain controller.

  • The primary printer for this site does not exhibit these performance issues. It supports TCP/IP directly.

When a job is sent to this printer, two jobs appear in the queue in short order. One of these jobs never has a size associated with it. Sometimes the "empty" job appears first and sometimes it appears second. Processing this null job appears to take approximately 30 seconds and will block the queue for that time. Deleting the job does not appear to speed the process up in any way.

Best Answer

This likely has to do with the quality of the printer. The P1006 is a fairly dumb printer and gets your PC to do all of the work. I try to avoid the super low end printers like the P1006 in TS situations, for everyday printing they're fine but they tend to be a killer on support calls in remote situations. Generally I've found that if you spend about $250+ on the printer it works out well, it seems like thats the price point to get the basic intelligence built into the printer.