Printing from AD joined Macs slooow

April 4, 2007 12:08 AM

Printing to a Xerox DocuCentre from Macs joined to the Active Directory is very slow.

We have quite a few Macs in my company of various types; iMacs (Intel&PPC), iBooks, MacBook Pros, G5, etc. They print to an f450 DocuCentre. We have only recently started using this machine as a printer. When any of the Macs that are joined to the AD select print (or push command+P, or change to the f450 from another printer in the printer dialog) the spinning beach ball shows up for almost 1 minute. It will spin at least 30 seconds. This happens only on Macs (and all) joined to the directory.
I'm at a total loss.

posted by m3thod4 to computers & internet (5 comments total)

No direct experience with the DocuCenter, but I've played with the DocuColor machines and oher PS printers for years. Does it have an external RIP or are the Macs RIPping the file data? If the Macs are doing all the work then you can expect the printing to take a while.
posted by lekvar at 1:51 PM on April 4, 2007

Sorry, I think the DoucColor and DocuCentre are the same. It's just called differently in Japan. Anyway, we bought some "unit" to install in the printer to make it able to print from Macs. To actually print takes just a second. It's opening the print dialog that takes forever. Really weird.
posted by m3thod4 at 6:26 PM on April 5, 2007

That does seem unusual. Have you downloaded the most recent drivers? Oh, and is there any difference between the PPC Macs and the Intel Macs?
posted by lekvar at 7:05 PM on April 5, 2007

It's weird. Definitely have the latest drivers. The Xerox tech person came in to help us set it up. There is no difference between Intel and PPC macs. The only thing that is different is the Macs that are not joined to the domain have no lag. The only thing I can think of is when print dialog comes up, it's searching the domain for something.
posted by m3thod4 at 11:46 PM on April 5, 2007

Very likely. If you have a network-type available I'd have them look at your setup to see if it can't be streamlined. Other than that, I got nothing. Good luck.
posted by lekvar at 3:18 AM on April 6, 2007