Tuesday, October 20, 2009

FIX: Xerox WorkCentre is offline on a Windows 2003 Server

Symptomes: Some network printers published by a Windows 2003 SP2 server will be marked as "offline" and cease to be available. Restarting the spooler will make the printers briefly available (for 30 seconds or so) before they reset to offline status.

Problem: MS has changed the way SNMP-enabled printer are handeled in SP2. I don't have the full detail, but apparently any printer that is marked as SNMP enabled (by the driver, I assume) will REQUIRE (by default) SNMP to be setup correctly and working on both the printer and local server (community names). Never mind if these printer all have SNMP actually disabled.

Solution: On the properties of each printer (on the server), select the "port" tab, local the correct port, click on "configure" and uncheck "SNMP enabled". Once you click "ok" the printer's status will be instantly turned back to normal.

2 comments:

Autumn Dusk said...

This helped me today when a Xerox WorkCenter 7346 had the same symptoms. Disabling SNMP on the port solved the issue. Thank you!

Desktop Dude said...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946198