danny’s space

The LAN in the building I work in now for honours uses network printers - by this I mean printers physically hooked up to the network through their own RJ45 ports, meaning they have their own IP addresses.

A problem exists with Windows XP SP2 (not SP1 or before) and TCP/IP printers in that whenever you try to bring up the Print dialog box, it is slow and takes ages to load. At least 10 seconds, although I’ve read reports on Google groups that it can take up to 1-2 minutes.

I searched and searched for answers to this problem - lots of people using TCP/IP network printers and SP2 seem to have this problem, but few solutions. Some suggest using a server share name, like //server/printer, but unfortunately that doesn’t work for TCP/IP-configured printers. Some suggest updating the network hardware or something to do with a thing called Samba, but I have no idea about that plus I’m not a network admin. Other suggestions have been made too - a search of Google groups will bring them up.

The only suggestion that works for me is disabling NetBIOS in TCP/IP WINS settings. The Print dialog pops up straight away (well, at normal speed) now. Unfortunately, you win some you lose some. Disabling NetBIOS over TCP/IP means that I can’t access the network drives at home through the DHCP router. Argh! But if I enable NetBIOS at home but still have the lab printer set up, the Print dialog still takes ages to show up. Which means that whenever I need to share files at home, I need to remove the printer, enable NetBIOS, and go. And when I’m in the office/lab, I need to add the printer, disable NetBIOS, and go. Pain in the ass.

Stupid Windows XP SP2. If this problem is so widespread, why doesn’t ol’ Billy Gates fix it up? Especially since it apparently affects so many users on corporate networks with TCP/IP printers?

I post this so that perhaps someone (who might Google the problem) will benefit from what I write here.