AD printer problem....
Discussion
Anyone come across this before?
I have dozens of servers which are all ok but one keeps losing its printers in AD. These are published & show up fine for a couple of days then people report they can't see printers in a search.
Theres a couple of fixes for this, unpublishing each printer then republishing it sorts them out on a one by one basis & stop/starting the spooler gets them all back as well. The key thing being though that the spooler was running fine, printing was fine, it is just the publishing that stops working.
Microsoft have nothing even close to this problem listed anywhere & all the usual sources I use come up blank as well.
Anyone seen this before & found a solution to it????
I have dozens of servers which are all ok but one keeps losing its printers in AD. These are published & show up fine for a couple of days then people report they can't see printers in a search.
Theres a couple of fixes for this, unpublishing each printer then republishing it sorts them out on a one by one basis & stop/starting the spooler gets them all back as well. The key thing being though that the spooler was running fine, printing was fine, it is just the publishing that stops working.
Microsoft have nothing even close to this problem listed anywhere & all the usual sources I use come up blank as well.
Anyone seen this before & found a solution to it????
OK, this is making a few assumptions so I may be talking complete rubbish.
AFAIK, the print spooler service publishes printers when it starts up (and at no other time).
However, the print spooler service on every DC checks for the existance of published printers every 8 hours.
If after 3 intervals the printers cannot be contacted, the entries are removed from AD.
So, I'd guess that you've got a name resolution problem (or network problem) where one of the DC's cannot see the print server and therefore removes the entries.
A really bad case of this is documented here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;246906
D
edited to say: also you should be able to check the event log on DC's in that site to check if that is the cause of the removals....
>> Edited by _DeeJay_ on Friday 11th February 15:20
AFAIK, the print spooler service publishes printers when it starts up (and at no other time).
However, the print spooler service on every DC checks for the existance of published printers every 8 hours.
If after 3 intervals the printers cannot be contacted, the entries are removed from AD.
So, I'd guess that you've got a name resolution problem (or network problem) where one of the DC's cannot see the print server and therefore removes the entries.
A really bad case of this is documented here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;246906
D
edited to say: also you should be able to check the event log on DC's in that site to check if that is the cause of the removals....
>> Edited by _DeeJay_ on Friday 11th February 15:20
Cheers, I've already found the pruner to be the cause of this but didn't get time to update the topic here.
Cant figure out why the printers are not contactable though & being pruned, name resolution checks out ok, any idea what sort of network issue could cause this? Secure channel switching to several DC's in different sites does not help so presume any network issue would be on this particular sites gateway.
Why I got a job with computers I dont know, I hate the bastard things!
Cant figure out why the printers are not contactable though & being pruned, name resolution checks out ok, any idea what sort of network issue could cause this? Secure channel switching to several DC's in different sites does not help so presume any network issue would be on this particular sites gateway.
Why I got a job with computers I dont know, I hate the bastard things!
I suspect it's the print server, not the printers that it is trying to contact (unless you're manually publishing printers/have clever printers).
Did you work out whether it was one DC is particular, or all that remove it?
edited to add: AFAIK, ALL dc's in the site will check availability. If your site represents a local LAN, it won't be the gateway causing the issue.
D
>> Edited by _DeeJay_ on Monday 14th February 13:05
Did you work out whether it was one DC is particular, or all that remove it?
edited to add: AFAIK, ALL dc's in the site will check availability. If your site represents a local LAN, it won't be the gateway causing the issue.
D
>> Edited by _DeeJay_ on Monday 14th February 13:05
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