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[mrascii]

Hello, my name is Matthew and I'd greatly appreciate someone's help. I've checked the FAQ and perused the forums and while I'm not the only one with print server issues, I can't seem to locate anyone who has had my particular problem.

Specifically, although my computer can see the printer plugged into my DNS-320 and I can (ostensibly) install the correct driver for it, whenever I try to print something it takes FOREVER, or fails to print at all if the file is too big. It is such a bad delay that often times the program I'm printing from will stop responding.

As I mentioned, my Share Center is a DNS-320. Also, my printer is a Samsung SCX-4623F. Could someone help me with this? Thanks in advance for whatever advice you can offer.

[hoppo1]

Although capable of printing, the amount of memory available for spooling is quite small. The 320 will not use your disks for spooling the print jobs and so as you have found, large jobs will fail and the hardware limitations (USB1 I believe) of the 320 mean it will also be slow. These are aimed at the home market so tend to have lots of "features" to make them more attractive. In reality the performance tends to be poor. I have a netgear NAS that also has a print server which suffers the same slow / large print failures. I tried rooting that and moving the spool folder to one of the disks but its hard coded in. You could try disabling everything on the 320 ( itunes server, upnp etc ) see if that frees up some memory although you are best looking on ebay or amazon for a cheap wireless / wired print server dedicated to the job.

[hongaun]

It does take about 20-30 seconds longer to print compared to directly connected, but it still do print (mine is a hp laserjet 1010). So far I manage to print 60 pages documents manual duplex without issues, but I havent try anything bigger than that.

[mrascii]

I wish I only had a 20-30 second delay. Instead, when I hit the "Print" button in the file menu, it takes nearly a minute to even bring up the dialogue box (and the program usually will report itself as not responding in the mean time). I then have a similar wait if I try to change any of the settings before printing. As for printing itself, it usually takes a couple minutes. I was really hoping I was just doing something wrong somehow, and there'd be an easy fix.

Hoppo1, I believe I already have the services you mentioned disabled (or at least, I never enabled them). I'll double check when I get home from work. I don't suppose there's some sort of third party firmware, rooting, or something I could do to completely remove features like that, or anything else that would produce a noticable performance gain? All I really need is a Raid 1 array to backup all of my home computers and a print server.

Thank you both for your quick replies, I appreciate it.

[ivan]

Matthew, I think a large part of the problem is how your printer is set up.

Here we have an HP Color laserjet 3500 connected to one of our DNS-320 which we use to print anything up to 150 page manuals and we have no problems.

Part of your problem is that your printer has only a very small amount of internal memory and so relies on the memory of the computer using it.  You might be able to improve printing by making sure the print spool file is on your computer - the DNS-320 just does not have enough memory for that and it does not store the spool file on the disks.

You may also be able to improve printing by changing some of the settings of the print driver - I don't know what they are as I don't have that printer.

Also check your network settings and the printer IP address.  If your DNS-320 is on a dynamic IP is your printer driver set to use print server name or a fixed IP address, for example.

[mrascii]

Thanks Ivan, that makes sense. I'll try all of that when I get home. Maybe this printer will have to end up on Craigslist...

[dns-320.user]

Try checking your Windows printer settings before you sell it  Make sure you have the "Start printing after the last page is spooled" option selected under the advanced tab in printer properties. I don't use the usb port on my DNS-320, but this setting improves my network printing performance on my machines.