Hello all, I spent a couple of days figuring this out, and I found some related posts without solutions, so I figured I would sent this to the list. We run a small local network here with a mixed bag of Windows XP / 2000 / Linux clients. We have been using Samba to allow access to a set of shared printers using a linux server. We also have a separate linux server that handles our file serving and WINS name resolution. On the printer server, we are running samba 3.0.1, and on the WINS server we are running an older version, 2.2.5. Unfortunately, due to legacy applications, library incompatabilities, and heavy load, we do not at this time desire to upgrade samba on the WINS server. (It occurs to me that these problems may be fixed by an upgrade of samba on our WINS server, but what I describe below also works as a duct-tape solution.) We're a small group, so I set the "use client driver = yes" to avoid any possible confusion and to keep things simple. Recently, some of our computers were upgraded to XP SP2. After the upgrade, accessing the samba shared printers from the XP machines was incredibly slow. It would take tens of seconds to even bring up the printer status window, and printing from acrobat could take several minutes. After a great deal of poking around and fiddling, I have discovered that if the "Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" option is selected under the WINS tab of the advanced TCP/IP configuration, then after a reboot, accessing the samba shared printers was instantaneous, and there was no noticeable delay in printing from applications such as acrobat. There is a breif blurb about this setting here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q204279/#kb1 According to this reference, this setting can also be specified over DHCP. Unfortunately, on our network we use ISC dhcp3 as our DHCP server, and I could not find any options in the dhcpd.conf file that references this specefic vendor-specific DHCP extension, so a manual configuration of each client is needed. I hope this is of help to anybody with XP SP2 printing problems. Cheers, Gary.
Gary Steele
2004-Nov-12 22:22 UTC
[Samba] Re: Windows XP SP2 slow printing solution CORRECTION
Sorry about this last post. I later discovered that disabling netbios over TCP/IP resulted in a complete inability to connect to our SMB network. The printer dialog box did open up faster, but the print job that I though I had sent just sat in the queue on the XP box and never went anywhere. I am still looking for a solution if anyone has any ideas. I may try upgrading the WINS server side. Sorry about the inbox clutter, Gary. ------------------- On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Gary Steele wrote: Hello all, I spent a couple of days figuring this out, and I found some related posts without solutions, so I figured I would sent this to the list. We run a small local network here with a mixed bag of Windows XP / 2000 / Linux clients. We have been using Samba to allow access to a set of shared printers using a linux server. We also have a separate linux server that handles our file serving and WINS name resolution. On the printer server, we are running samba 3.0.1, and on the WINS server we are running an older version, 2.2.5. Unfortunately, due to legacy applications, library incompatabilities, and heavy load, we do not at this time desire to upgrade samba on the WINS server. (It occurs to me that these problems may be fixed by an upgrade of samba on our WINS server, but what I describe below also works as a duct-tape solution.) We're a small group, so I set the "use client driver = yes" to avoid any possible confusion and to keep things simple. Recently, some of our computers were upgraded to XP SP2. After the upgrade, accessing the samba shared printers from the XP machines was incredibly slow. It would take tens of seconds to even bring up the printer status window, and printing from acrobat could take several minutes. After a great deal of poking around and fiddling, I have discovered that if the "Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" option is selected under the WINS tab of the advanced TCP/IP configuration, then after a reboot, accessing the samba shared printers was instantaneous, and there was no noticeable delay in printing from applications such as acrobat. There is a breif blurb about this setting here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q204279/#kb1 According to this reference, this setting can also be specified over DHCP. Unfortunately, on our network we use ISC dhcp3 as our DHCP server, and I could not find any options in the dhcpd.conf file that references this specefic vendor-specific DHCP extension, so a manual configuration of each client is needed. I hope this is of help to anybody with XP SP2 printing problems. Cheers, Gary.
> On the printer server, we are running samba 3.0.1, and on the WINS > server we are running an older version, 2.2.5. > > Recently, some of our computers were upgraded to XP SP2. After the > upgrade, accessing the samba shared printers from the XP machines was > incredibly slow. It would take tens of seconds to even bring up the > printer status window, and printing from acrobat could take several > minutes.You'll have to upgrade the 3.0.1 box - MS introduced a bug in XP SP2 for printing which samba fixed in the later versions (> 3.0.5 I believe). Look at the release notes for the latest samba version and search for "SP2" and you'll see the problem. http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.0.8.html