Word Print Dialog box opening slow

[TTliu]

Recently, I got a problem. There are three computer connected with a switch
to share USB printer on one. When I open a word document and click Print in
File menu on one PC, It took very long time to show the dialog box.

I set another local printer to default, then open the word document to
print, the dialog box showed up very quick. But when I changed printer to the
Shared printer, it went very very slow again.

I can see the lights flashing on swwitch. The most interesting thing is the
third PC has no problem on printing.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

I would never attempt to put three computers on the same USB printer cable.
This kind of problem is "likely".

USB has a limited speed, and it slows down to the speed of the slowest
device on the bus. If you have a mouse or other low data rate device
connected to the USB line, printing will be painfully slow.

Recently, I got a problem. There are three computer connected with a switch
to share USB printer on one. When I open a word document and click Print in
File menu on one PC, It took very long time to show the dialog box.

I set another local printer to default, then open the word document to
print, the dialog box showed up very quick. But when I changed printer to the
Shared printer, it went very very slow again.

I can see the lights flashing on swwitch. The most interesting thing is the
third PC has no problem on printing.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[TTliu]

Thank you, I'm sorry, the switch is not a USB switch, it's a 100M network
switch.
The printer connected to one of them with USB.
The other two pcs had no problem to print to the printer.

Any more idea?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, I'm using a parallel printer, and my Print dialog box is extremely
slow to come up (and the printer reacts slowly to a direct FilePrintDefault
command) as well. This is a relatively recent development (the Print dialog
used to come up instantaneously), but I'm not sure whether to blame it on
the switch from dial-up to DSL or recent updates of NAV and ZoneAlarm, all
of which could have had adverse effects.

 

[TTliu]

It is funny. It works fine today. I rebooted, checked network connection,
changed to another network port on switch, reinstalled the driver and even
Ethernet cable, mouse at that day, but it didn't work for me.
Today, it works. It is liitle bit slow than the other computers, but it
won't freeze the computer. It takes about 3 second to popup the dialog box.
What I want to know now is WHY!