Windows XP and printing

[Unregistered]

I am running PCA2002 on Windows XP on a Novell NetWare 5.1 IP network. I have installed the XP Client32 and all seems to be well except, I can't print checks! It locks up and I have to log off and log back on before I can get back into PCA. Any ideas?!?!?!

[jdncpa]

I am having similar problems here. I have a novel small business server, PAW 7, and windows XP.

All works well but I can't print checks.

Please help.

[jdncpa]

In the end we upgraded to PAW2002 and everything now works.

Our new problem is that PAW2002 is running really slow on our XP machines. It runs extremely fast on out Win98 machines though.

Strange.

[Deborah Bean]

If you go to any of the XP forums or talk to any Windows expert (my husband Neal Berkowitz is one), they should tell you that XP has known - and additional probable - problems in the areas of security, stability, and reliability. It is not a stable business platform.

For our own clients we get low-priced XP machines and then wipe theie harddrives and install Windows 2000 which is much more stable and reliable. Windows 2000 is an excellent networking OS and supplants NT 4.0.

[wellsmicro]

We have installed Peachtree on a number of xp computers and it works fine.

XP is a stable platform, security issues with xp also affect Win98, Win98SE, and Win2000. XP was singled out for many of these problems because of MS bold statements about XP security.

If your having trouble with Peachtree printing in XP, using a novell server, you can upgrade the server software and don't need to load novell client on xp computer.

Windows 2000 servers, are working without errors. Does this make 2000 servers better than novell - NO! But the fact is if you want less problems, move to win2000 server. We don't have to like it, may even hate it, but it's the real world.

Our biggest networking workload are switching companies from novell to NT or 2000. In most all cases, the client is the one pressing the issue.

[jag]

IMHO,

I agree with wellsmicro. I don't think Windows Xp is worse than Windows 2000 (I don't think is much better in any case) in those areas.

But if you have a Win Xp system and you erase the hard disk to put Windows 2000, you got to pay for that license too.

Also, the fact that Peachtree runs slow on that particular Win Xp computer could be that they are running an Antivirus Software. Which are known to reduce Peachtree Speed. Also, network cards and many other hardware related issues can affect the performance of a computer.

jdncpa are you running any anti-virus software on those machines? If so, uninstall the anti-virus (or disable it) and test it again.

HIH

[jdncpa]

I do have McAfee on the XP machines. Peachtree is slow even when disabled.

I did an experiment recently. I put Win2000 on two of our office machines. One is an old Gateway 233Mhz, 160MB Ram. It does have a SCSI hard drive which speeds it up a bit. The other is a Dell Optiplex PIII 800+Mhz with 128MB Ram.

These two machines are set-up identically.

The Gateway machine blows the Dell out of the water when running Peachtree. Can't figure out why.

As an example - Click on reports then on Accounts receivable. Then click on Preview or Excel. This is where the speed starts to show. It takes a few extra seconds for the next screen to pop up (the one where filter and change report settings). The Gateway pops this screen up immediately.

The next issue is if you hit the excel button to run the report. The report seems to generate fairly quickly but after the generated report gets to 100% it takes 30 seconds to actually go to excel. Again, the Gateway machine is instantaneous.

Printing in general takes longer on all the XP and the Dell Win2000 machine. The Gateway WIn200 machine and ALL of our Win98 machines are 10X faster. This is regardless of RAM, processor speed, etc.

[jdncpa]

OK. After my last post I went back to do some more testing on all the machines in our office.

The Gateway Win2000 machine is now doing the same slow things as the other Win2000 and XP machines.

The Win98 machines are still doing good though.

I have not changed a single thing on the Win2000 machine since it was first working good and now isn't. Maybe it has something to do with number of users logged in. When I did my original testing there were only a few and now there are 8 or 9 logged in.

I also thought It might be some kind of conflict between our Novell SB 5.1 server but...I copied our peachtree data to a local machine and ran peachtree from there. Still slow.

Beginning to sound like all the money spend on upgrades was worthless. We might be going back to Win98.

Any suggestions.

[jag]

What Hub/Switch are you using ?

This may sound absurd, but once in the Peachtree Newsgroup someone posted a similar problem. The interesting thing was that another guy replied him beacuse he got the same problem since they changed their hub to another brand (I think it was a Linksys 12-port Hub). To my surprise the first guy replied to have the exact same hub, also he experienced the same problem after switching from another hub.

What do you think about that?

WINDOWS WORKS IN MISTERIOUS WAYS !!! :-)

HIH

[jdncpa]

We use a Netgear 24 port hub. No switch, although I have considered testing one to see if that solves any of our problems.

I have already experimented with changing the NIC's on each machine to the same brand as the hub but that didn't do any good.

Another test I did: I did a test at home on my personal PC. I temporarily installed PAW2002. I already use WinXP Pro. This is a Dell very similar to the one mentioned in earlier posts. I brough a copy of our company database home and guess what....

...everything worked perfect. That leads me back to a network problem. When I get to work this morning I will uninstal all the network files and do some testing on a machine there to see if it helps.

Thanks for everyone's help.

[jdncpa]

I figured out most of our problem. It is the network printer.

Don't know why I decided to try this but I changed my default printer to a different network printer (one that works faster by the way) and Peachtree zips along now.

Now I just have to figure out why that particular printer has problems. It is a Tektronix 850DP on a Novell SB5.1 server. It uses NDPS.

The printer that works is acually a copier that is a printer on the network using an IP address.