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[pwindsor7]

My company has an application that is used by all of our sales staff called Smart.  This program is similar to MS Access but is custom built for my companies specific needs.
All users are currently running on Windows 2000 Pro.  and connect to "Smart" using terminal services.
Within the last month 90 percent of the sales staff has complained about SLOW printing.
When a Sales rep enters in a customers information and sends a print job to the network printer, the Smart application clocks for about ten to eleven minutes.
The sales reps cannot enter in any other information until the job finishes spooling to the printer.

The layout of my network is:
SMOTSE1 & SMOTSE2 - Terminal servers located in another state ( California )
KASAPP - My application server that is here in my office (Kansas) ( Controls all Local Network Printers in my office )
All of my servers are using Active Directory Services, running Windows 2000,  Have the Latest Patches and Service Pack 4.

The weird thing is that there is still 10% of our sales staff ( About 3 Users ) that open up the same forms as the other 90% of the sales staff and can print without this delay.

TroubleShooting to date:
I have stopped and restarted the spooler on all servers and user workstations. (No Change)
I have cleared Inet Cache off of all Sales workstations. (No Change)
I have reset the default time out from 15 to 3 on all user workstations, terminal servers and on my application server. (No Change)
I have checked all service packs, applications and settings on both a good users systems and a troubled users system - All settings are the same.
I have even had a troubled user login to a good users system and the troubled user still has to wait for ten to eleven minutes.

What am I missing?
( Sorry to make this sound like a Microsoft test question )

[Bob]

Whew, you've got an interesting setup!

Let's see if I understand this properly. The terminal servers are in CA. The Unix machine they are connecting to is in CA as well? The printers AND your users are in Kansas.

So they connect to the terminal server(s) in CA as a thin client and then go to a unix session using PRO. When they print (using pass through printing I assume) the terminal server(s) pass the print job back to Kansas.

Some users (3) are fast. Most (the rest) are slow. If a slow user logs onto the terminal server using the fast users machine, they are still slow.

If I have this right, it looks to me like there is something wrong with the printer selection or redirection on the terminal server(s) in CA.

I guess I'd check the following:

Printer selection by user in PRO on the terminal server (local print setup)
Differences between the 2 terminal servers in printer redirection.

[pwindsor7]

Thank you, I will take a look at the redirection.  My terminal server ( In California )has the smart program and user information on its E: drive ( Approx 6 Gig in size )  My users access the applicaiton on this server and when they print all printing is routed to my local print server (KASAPP).  Is it possible to have the terminal server route the print job directly to the network printers?  Or would this take up to much bandwidth on my WAN?  These print jobs are about 12 to 18 Pages

[Bob]

If you have the two sites connected by a vpn and the ip addresses of the network printers are reachable by the terminal server(s) you should be able to send them directly from the terminal servers to the network printers using either the windows "unix" print services or if they are HP, the hp web jet services.

If the printouts are mostly graphics it could explain the slow movement of the jobs. Another thing to check would be something like postscript level if you are using postscript printers because the higher level postscript (like postscript3) achives huge compression over earlier versions and that may be a settable option for your printer on the terminal server(s).

[pwindsor7]

Thank you all for your help.  I checked the printer redirection.  All settings were correct.  With that in mind I took a better look at the data and TMP files that were stored for each user (Within the Smart Program ).  I copied a folder from a known good user and renamed it to be used by one of the "Slow Users".  This worked fine.  I am going to have the server team review how the "Slow Users: are setup in the Smart Applicaiton as compaired to the three users that are not having any issue.

Thank You for your help and I will do what I can to help other users on this site !!!

[Bob]

Thanks for your reply and please let us know what you find...