Hi Folks,
came across the same problem. I replaced my customers Win98 PC's with brand new P4 3.2Ghz PC's running Windows XP Pro SP2. These pc's connect to an older Win98 printer which has a HP Deskjet 5550 printer connected via a USB cable and shared on the network. If you right click on the printer properties on the new WinXP SP2 PC's, it sits there for about 30 seconds.

also get the following error in the Event log;

Event ID: 4226: TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP Connect attempts.

Found this link;

http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1497

looks like Microsoft have made some hefty changes in SP2 in relation to TCP Connections (Changed from Unlimited to 10). The patch supplied changes to the limit to 50, although slightly improves it, it is still slow.

Here is the link from Microsoft regarding the changes in SP2 (refer details to TCP);

http://comptelit.dyndns.org/exchweb/...wk.mspx%23EIAA

Searched Microsoft site for any patches or other workarounds but none found. Your suggestions to stick on a print server device and print via the IP address is a good idea and should resolve the issue, but is a costly way to get around a problem which wasnt there prior to SP2.

If this a TCP port /RPC Connection issue then manually mapping an lpt port assignment should work as well. Will try this and advise.

Cheers, David