Got a tough networking question...

Hey all, first a little background. I'm a network admin at my compnay, The only network admin. My boss, is the "IT Director" but he doesn't do much of the Admin work, he does more of the policy's etc (Although due to one of our guys being laid off, he's doing more admin stuff now). We have about 120 employees in 5 sites, w/ about 60 people in our main site where I work out of primarily. We just had out print server crash a few days ago. I was in the middle of moving roles and responsibilities from that server to a new server that was going to assume all those roles but it crashed before I finished. Among the roles that I hadn't transferred yet were print server duties.

So, now that I've got all the printers transferred and installed on all the local(local meaning the main site) pc's, We're suddenly having slowness issues when opening MS Word docs over the network. I haven't changed anything on our data server which holds those word docs. So far, the only correlation is the time frame in which this slowness problem manifested itself. it seems to coincide w/ the print server crash.

I'm wondering if maybe MS docs somehow maintain printer info (from the creating pc). Now that those printer share names and print server names are different, I'm thinking that's causing some issues with word trying to reconnect to the old, non-existent printers.

thoughts?

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Comments

UnixGeek

Sounds like it's time to break out a packet sniffer. Is traffic other than MS Word docs being slowed down as well? If you open up a Word doc that's located on a local drive, does it run at normal speed?

Daniel333

Ping time to the server from a workstation? Are they all in the same VLAN?

Might wana do a start>>run>> perfmon on the server and check the Disk queues (not the average), CPU and memory. If your low on CPU or mem it will be obvious. Disk queues should not be any longer than 2x the number of disks in the array.

I am assuming gigabit NIC? Is the NIC a quality one? I have heard instances where low end gigabit NICs offload a lot of work on the server CPU.

94jedi

thanks for the tips guys...there are multiple vlans in this office (separated by multiple unmanaged switches)

No other network traffic is being affected, as far as I know.

I've just downloaded ethereal. I guess I've got some detective work to do.

Claymoore

If all file access seems to be slow, you should check the disk performance like Daniel recommended. The addition of multiple print queues may have degraded your disk performance with disk activity related to the spool file, especially if there is RAID 5 and its write penalty involved. You can move the spool file to a different physical disk fairly easily.

Move the printer spool folder in Windows Server 2003 : TechGuides : Windows Server : ZDNet Asia

94jedi

maybe I was a bit unclear but the data server is separate from both the old server that crashed and the new server that is assuming it's roles.

joey74055

Is anything else slow on the data server or just the word documents?

tdox

Make sure the clients are not pointing to printers that don’t exist. Maybe try deleting shared printers and see if problem still persist.

TravR1

He said only MS Doc's are running slowely..

Does MS DOC's run at normal speed locally?

I asked a Sr Admin here and he said MS Doc's don't maintain old printer info.

TravR1

Here.. might want to check this out, if you haven't already.

Word is slow to start, print, or load documents

94jedi

TravR1 wrote: »

He said only MS Doc's are running slowely..

Does MS DOC's run at normal speed locally?

I asked a Sr Admin here and he said MS Doc's don't maintain old printer info.

gotcha....that was my stab in the dark.

It appears to be just MS Docs.

I'll make sure all old printer are removed. I might look into writing a VB login script or something to delete old printers.

Forsaken_GA

This is why sysadmins and network admins hate each other. Sysadmins always assume it's the network, netadmins always assume it's the server and/or client.

dynamik

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

This is why sysadmins and network admins hate each other. Sysadmins always assume it's the network, netadmins always assume it's the server and/or client.

Can't we all just get along and blame the end user?

NetAdmin2436

To test, I would take one PC that's having the issue. Delete all the old invalid printers and see if word still opens slowly. If they don't open slowly no more then you can assume it was the printer and you can use a script as you mentioned. This script below is my fav, it will go through and purge ALL network printers and add the printers you specify. Note: this will NOT remove local printers. The wshNet.SetDefaultPrinter arPrt(1) in this case will make the HPColorLaserJet4600PCL5c the default printer. So, if you have multiple sites, you will probably have to create multiple scripts apply through Group Policy and adjust printers accordingly.

arPrt = array("\\Server\HPLaserJet5000PS", _
                    "\\Server\HPColorLaserJet4600PCL5c", _
                    "\\Server\Canon iR1600-2000 (FAX)", _
                    "\\Server\Canon iR1600-2000 PCL5e", _
                    "\\Server\HP DesignJet 800 24 by HP", _
                    "\\Server\hpLaserJet1300_PCL5e", _
                    "\\Server\HP LaserJet 6L")

Set wshNet = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set wshPrn = wshNet.EnumPrinterConnections
For x = 0 To wshPrn.Count - 1 Step 2
    If Left(wshPrn.Item(x+1),2) = "\\" Then wshNet.RemovePrinterConnection wshPrn.Item(x+1),True,True
Next
On Error Resume Next

y = 0

Do until y = 6 
           wshNet.AddWindowsPrinterConnection(arPrt(y))
           y = y +1
loop

wshNet.SetDefaultPrinter arPrt(1)

If removing the old printers doesn't work then there could be other issues. Does this happen to ALL Word documents, or just some? The other thing I was thinking is if the word documents were created from a template and the path to the template is no long valid, then that can cause the same slowness behavior. Maybe a template was on the print server at one time. You have to check the metadata in the actual word document. With Word 2007 you would go to the microsoft office button --> prepare --> inspect document.

I hope this helps!

SWM

Your old Print Server wasn't a DNS server as well was it? I have seen missing DNS servers really slow things down making AD authentication painfully slow and hence drive letter share browsing from applications (like word) terrible.

Just a thought ....

TravR1

Oh no theres animosity between sys\netadmins? I thought that was something only for the military or law enforcement.

JavonR

dynamik wrote: »

Aw

Can't we all just get along and blame the end user?

LOL. You made me laugh at work

remyforbes777

Fire up a sniffer.

94jedi

guys, it's remnants of the old print server in the registry on the client pc's.

here's my "new" thread lol:

http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/43782-massive-noob-question-please-help.html#post319721