Troubleshooting Windows NT printing problems can be a challenge because of the number of variables involved in printing and the number of different clients and print devices that Windows NT supports.
Windows NT has a modular printing architecture, with a module for each major task (such as receiving jobs from network clients). By adding new modules you can easily add functionality (such as support for a new type of network client). This modularity gives Windows NT a great deal of flexibility, making it able to support a wide variety of client operating systems, applications, data objects, network configurations, spooling options, and print devices. That flexibility comes at a cost, however, because each additional configuration adds its own possible points of failure.
Successful troubleshooting depends on your ability to quickly rule in or rule out general categories of points of failure. The modularity makes this fairly easy: Network printing, for example, consists of seven processes that always occur in the same order. By testing one of the processes, you can determine whether the problem is occurring in that process, before it, or after it.
The following are the seven basic processes involved in a network printing job:
1. An administrator creates a print share on the print server.
2. A client system connects to that share.
3. The client system creates a print job.
4. The client system sends the print job to the print share on the print server.
5. The print server receives, spools, and sometimes modifies the print job.
6. The print server sends the job to the print device.
7. The print device interprets the job and produces hardcopy output.
The basic strategy for troubleshooting printing problems is to use problem symptoms to identify the process, or processes, that are creating the problems. If you still cannot correct the problem after you've located it, your technical support engineer will be much better able to help you correct it if you have first isolated the process where the problem exists.
1. Identify which of the seven processes is failing:
2. Look for documented explanations or solutions from the following sources:
3. If possible, reconfigure the process to avoid the problem in the short term.
4. Implement long term solutions.
To help you implement this strategy, this section presents the seven basic printing processes and gives the following information about each process: