I've been facing a peculiar printing problem in our workplace. Every morning, multiple users—from the Call Center, HR, to myself—report that their first print job of the day fails to reach the printer. It seems to be independent of the user or printer model, and consistently follows this pattern: the first print job after a period of inactivity doesn't print at all, but the second print attempt right after goes through without any issues. No errors pop up; the job just doesn't make it to the printer. We're operating in a Windows environment with network printers, and this issue affects various printers after they've been idle overnight. I suspect this might be a systemic issue—like something related to sleep state, spooler initialization, or network delays—rather than a hardware malfunction. Has anyone else experienced this? Any insights would be greatly appreciated before I start tweaking sleep settings or diving into spooler behavior.
5 Answers
Are the printers connected directly or through print servers? You might want to check your print server logs. If you wake the printer up first, does it still fail on the first job? It could also hint at firmware issues with the printer.
It sounds like your printers are going to sleep mode. The first print job might just wake it up but it doesn’t actually print. Have you looked into the make and model of the printers? Different brands handle sleep states in varying ways.
What method are you using for printer connections? Like, IPP or TCP/IP? If you want to troubleshoot, try isolating one printer and testing with a USB connection. If the problem continues, it's likely a configuration issue with the printer itself.
Is your environment using dynamic IPs for the printers? It might be worth switching to static IPs to see if that resolves the issue. It definitely feels like a networking hiccup.
If the printers are HP, it could be a driver issue causing the problem with the first job every morning.
Related Questions
Can't Load PhpMyadmin On After Server Update
Redirect www to non-www in Apache Conf
How To Check If Your SSL Cert Is SHA 1
Windows TrackPad Gestures