After installing the XP SP3 upgrade I've got printer problems when connected to the network at the office. When hitting the "print" button programs just freezes (no matter if it's Word or AdobeReader or Firefox or OpenOffice).

If I open Window's "Printers and Faxes" panel, printer status is given as "opening". If I wait a few minutes status changes to "ready" and then printing works perfectly. But if I close the panel and re-open it it's back to "opening"

Anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions how to solve it? I can think of two: restore my pc to SP2 mode or re-installing all printer drivers. Would appreciate something simpler, though.

I'll talk to the IT gurus here as well, but since it is my personal laptop they won't prioritise this problem (seems as if SP3 hasn't yet been installed on other machines here).

You could try cleaning up the print jobs and drivers:

1. Delete all printers in control panel.

2. Stop the print spooler service.

3. Go to windows\system32\spool\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ and delete everything in that folder. You may need to reboot to do this: stop the spooler again if so- or temporarily set it to disabled to prevent it starting.

4. go to \windows\system32\spool\printers and delete any .spl or .shd files there.

5. Go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers. If there are any subkeys present with printer names, trash them. Usual warnings about registry editing apply :-)

6. Restart the spooler. re-install the printer drivers.

Go to printer properties > click advanced > tick print directly to printer.

HTH

Thanks for your suggestions

However, I feared for starting the cleanup/reinstall job since every step through the printer network took ages (five mins. for reaching the \\print menu, another five mins. before the folder with drivers opened and so on). So I decided to uninstall SP3 first and see what happened.

Yes, of course. Everything's back to normal. Swift access to printer network, no more freezing programmes

So apparently there's some bug hidden in SP3 and it's probably wise to wait till the next version is released, especially if you are using a network.

I'm using sp3 with no issues. However, problems like that sound like a spooler problem, and the SP seemed to replace the spooler service, hence my suggestion: It sounds like spooler is hanging, and the usual cause is dodgy print drivers or corrupt jobs.

If it was mine, I'd image it with ghost, do the cleanup above, re-install SP3, and test.

I'm using sp3 with no issues. However, problems like that sound like a spooler problem, and the SP seemed to replace the spooler service, hence my suggestion: It sounds like spooler is hanging, and the usual cause is dodgy print drivers or corrupt jobs.

If it was mine, I'd image it with ghost, do the cleanup above, re-install SP3, and test.

Are you using it in a large network too?

Your experience of network issues is no doubt far beyond mine so I shouldn't argue - and if the problem occured only when trying to print I would happily go for the spooler idea. But what makes me suspicious is that every attempt to connect with the printer network was slowed down to snail speed. It took five minutes to receive the status message "ready" when opening the Printer panel without trying to print, and when I re-installed drivers for one printer where I knew that mine were a bit old I had to wait for 5-10 mins. at every step towards the driver folder on the network before I could proceed.

It seems as if the IT folks here haven't started the upgrading work on the uni's own computers yet so I'll wait for their experiences.