Microsoft KB Archive/258464

= Printer Spooler Resource Continually Fails Between Nodes During a Failover =

Article ID: 258464

Article Last Modified on 2/28/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
 * Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition

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This article was previously published under Q258464



SYMPTOMS
When you perform a Move group operation on a group that contains a Print Spooler resource with several hundred printers defined, the resource fails back and forth between nodes. The Print Spooler resource stays in an online pending state for several minutes before it fails back to the other node.

While in an online pending state, the local print spooler is still spooling print jobs to the printers. After several failures the spooler eventually catches up with the number of spooled print jobs, comes back online, and resides on the final node.



RESOLUTION
Increase the Pending Timeout value for the print spooler. This value is the amount of time that the Cluster Service will wait for the Print Spooler resource to stop before it forcefully moves the print spooler to another node. When you have a large number of printers, it can take more time for the Print Spooler resource to stop.

To increase the Pending Timeout value, follow these steps:
 * 1) Start Cluster Administrator.
 * 2) Click Properties for the Print Spooler resource.
 * 3) In the Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab, and then increase the value in Pending Timeout.

If your cluster contains approximately 700 printers, change the value to 720 (12 minutes), which is four times the original value of 180 seconds (3 minutes). If you have more than 700 printers, increasing the Pending Timeout value above 720 seconds may resolve the issue.

Additional query words: MSCS

Keywords: kbclustering kbprb KB258464

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