Take printers offline to improve WORD performance?

[John]

I run WinXP Pro/SP2 and have about a dozen printers defined. Half of
these printers are actually various drivers to create PDFs.

I tend to use only two or three of thse printers. Would it help to
improve general system performance if I set the rarely-used printer
drivers to "offline"?

If it doesn't help *general* system performance then would it help speed
up certain applications such as MS Word. Despite clearing out MS Word
addins and cleaning up normal.dot, my MS Word still launches a bit
slowly.

IIRC Word is aware of the default printer for the PC and perhaps Word is
aware of other printers too. I think Word uses the printer definition
to make some of Word's features work such as line numbering.

Any help about this is welcome.

 

[Gordon]

I run WinXP Pro/SP2 and have about a dozen printers defined. Half of
these printers are actually various drivers to create PDFs.

Why do you need so many? One would be sufficient...(a PDF is a PDF is a
PDF........)

 

[Leonard Grey]

Taking printers offline won't make your computer or any installed
application run faster.

 

[Bob I]

In-line

I run WinXP Pro/SP2 and have about a dozen printers defined. Half of
these printers are actually various drivers to create PDFs.

That's ok.

I tend to use only two or three of thse printers. Would it help to
improve general system performance if I set the rarely-used printer
drivers to "offline"?

Nope.

If it doesn't help *general* system performance then would it help speed
up certain applications such as MS Word. Despite clearing out MS Word
addins and cleaning up normal.dot, my MS Word still launches a bit
slowly.

Nope. Probably your computer hardware.

IIRC Word is aware of the default printer for the PC and perhaps Word is
aware of other printers too. I think Word uses the printer definition
to make some of Word's features work such as line numbering.

it depends solely on the default printer.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Word will only look at the Windows Default printer unless you specifically
select a different printer from the File, Print dialog. Then it will stop
looking at the Windows default printer until you change back again (or
restart Word). So removing printers or taking them off line will not improve
performance of Word.

But please note that Word MUST see a default installed printer to work
correctly - so don't remove them all <g>

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Word will only look at the Windows Default printer unless you specifically

select a different printer from the File, Print dialog. Then it will stop
looking at the Windows default printer until you change back again (or
restart Word). So removing printers or taking them off line will not
improve performance of Word.

But please note that Word MUST see a default installed printer to work
correctly - so don't remove them all <g>

I'd normally agree with you 100% and be giving the same advice, however a
while back, I've struggled on a regular basis with one of my systems that
had a remote printer defined as the default (well, *both* of my printers are
remote--they're hooked up to an old laptop that's left on 24/7 for various
tasks).

As soon as I invoked *any* printer function (preview, print, navigating the
printer dialog boxes), the application that invoked the dialog box would
hang for a good 2-3 minutes for every single click and tab navigation. Word
was pretty badly affected--it came to a point where it just hung completely
(eg, no response for a half hour) whenever I tried to shut it down. I'd end
up having to kill the task. By deleting all printers, the system worked
perfectly fine.

The same was happening whichever of my two printers I setup as the default.
I ended up deleting (permanently) all printer connections from that system,
and only temporarily creating it when I actually needed to print something.
I've removed/reinstalled drivers repeatedly (and various versions), both on
the local and remote system, deleting/recreating the printer share on the
remote system, sometimes it started working fine, then the problem would
come back after a few days...right now--touch wood--my system's decided to
get its act together and has been fine for a few weeks. Damned if I know
why. I've asked about this in this newsgroup but never came across a final
solution. I'm just crossing my fingers it keeps working like it does right
now...

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

But did you have the driver for the remote printer installed locally?

 

[Warin]

I run WinXP Pro/SP2 and have about a dozen printers defined. Half
of these printers are actually various drivers to create PDFs.

I tend to use only two or three of thse printers. Would it help to
improve general system performance if I set the rarely-used printer
drivers to "offline"?

If it doesn't help *general* system performance then would it help
speed up certain applications such as MS Word. Despite clearing
out MS Word addins and cleaning up normal.dot, my MS Word still
launches a bit slowly.

IIRC Word is aware of the default printer for the PC and perhaps
Word is aware of other printers too. I think Word uses the printer
definition to make some of Word's features work such as line
numbering.

Any help about this is welcome.

Can't see it making any difference!

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Sorry to revive such an old thread, I just never went back to it...Normally
I'd just drop it, but I find this answer peculiar and just had to follow
up...

But did you have the driver for the remote printer installed locally?

I don't understand--as opposed to what, having the driver installed
remotely? I don't even know what that would mean...

 

[Jay Freedman]

Sorry to revive such an old thread, I just never went back to it...Normally
I'd just drop it, but I find this answer peculiar and just had to follow
up...



I don't understand--as opposed to what, having the driver installed
remotely? I don't even know what that would mean...

Yes, the question is about locally versus remotely installed drivers.

A locally installed driver is one whose file (usually a file with a .dll
extension) is located on the same PC that's running Word.

A remotely installed driver is one whose file is located on some other machine,
usually the PC to which the physical printer is attached, or maybe a network
server -- and has to be loaded across the network. Because network traffic is
much slower than memory access, there can be considerable delay. Because Word
can't even finish loading until it can talk to the default printer driver, that
can cause a lot of indigestion.

When you use the "Add a Printer" wizard in Windows' Printers & Faxes dialog, one
of the questions is whether the printer is local or networked. If you say it's
networked, you have the option of whether to copy the driver locally. For Word,
we recommend that you always accept that option.

 

[Bob I]

That's cause you read it backwards. I'll paraphrase. Do you have the
correct driver installed on your PC for the printer you want to print to.

 

[Willie]

Dont know why you need to troubleshoot MSWORD performance from that angle.
Printer drives should not give problem.
Why dont you troubleshoot from the User Profile approach.
Check you profile, what is the size of your profile? (generally, after
installing WinXP, you profile should be under 16Mbytes (max).
Try this approach: Goto to these locations and delete all the shortcuts to
trim your profile.
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent
C:\Documents and Settings\willie\Local Settings -- delete all items in
Temporary Internet files; Temp folder; History folder;
C:\Documents and Settings\willie\Recent - delete all the shortcuts;
If your profile is still large, try checking your profile to see if there
are any programs that is installed with default path leading to your profile.
If there are remove them now.

Now check your profile, it should run well if its reduced to say 35Mbytes.
It sure will help you bootup and shutdown. This issue was resolved since
2003, dont know why its still asked.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

That's cause you read it backwards. I'll paraphrase. Do you have the

correct driver installed on your PC for the printer you want to print to.

Ah. That makes sense. I read:

....as implying it could somehow be installed remotely. As in, the driver
would be installed on a remote machine. Does not compute.

If Suzanne meant it the way you're saying, then "locally" is really
unnecessary in this context.

One way or another, yeah, the full driver name matches the label on the
printer exactly.