Frequently Asked Questions Library Reporting

Why has all network printing stopped?

There have been occasions where all network printing from Online Advantage has stopped whilst everything else appears to be functioning perfectly. We have found that the cause is usually when someone attempts to print to print to an ‘interactive’ print queue like the “Microsoft XPS Document Writer’ printer.

What is an ‘interactive’ printer? It is a printer that relies on additional user input before it completes the print task. These printer queues will attempt to ask the user for some input e.g. for a path to save a file, or for fax cover-sheet details. However since the printer queue at server, these prompts will never appear for the user running OA on a browser somewhere disconnected from the server with the print queue in it. The user never sees the questions and so the server will wait for a response that it never gets. This leaves the print request queue in “limbo”. Then subsequent print requests by other users queue up behind the print job waiting for input.

To get printing going again you will need to contact the Help Desk for assistance as manual intervention will be required to clear the blockage.

Any “interactive” printers like the Microsoft XPS Document Writer, third-party software tools for document writing, and interactive Fax queues should be DELETED from the Online Advantage server as these cause the Pooler Printing to STOP!

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