Remote downlevel documents

Since upgrading approxiamately 40 users to Windows XP Professional we have continually encountered problems with printing. In the printer queue, which is on a Windows 2000 server, about 40,000 jobs appear there every 30 minutes. There are a few real jo
bs but most are "remote downlevel documents", needless to say this shuts down printing and we have to spend a lot of time deleting those jobs out of the queue and also the \\winnt\system32\spool\printers folder (*spl files of 0kb and *.shd files of 2kb).
The question is is there a configuration setting that we missed in setting up the new PCs, especially since this did not occur before when the PCs were Windows 95?

First, the phrase "remote downlevel document" is often used to identify
print "jobs" and is not by itself an indication of a problem - its normal.

Was XP installed as an "upgrade" or a "clean install" on the clients? If it
was an "upgrade" install, did you delete the "printers" from the client
computer before doing the "upgrade" install? If not, I suggest cleaning out
the drivers on the XP clients (see
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm). You might find
the technique at http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterAllUsers.htm
useful for adding the network printers on the clients afterwards.

Do you have Windows XP specific drivers installed on the print server? Or,
to put it another way, are "Version 3" drivers installed on the Windows 2000
print server? Many "Windows 2000" print drivers are actually "Version 2"
and although they may get automatically downloaded to the Windows XP client,
they can create various problems.

What make and model of printer is involved?

You might want to see if any of the information at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/ is useful.

--
Bruce Sanderson MVP

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.


"Jeff Berry" wrote in message
...
Since upgrading approxiamately 40 users to Windows XP Professional we
have continually encountered problems with printing. In the printer queue,
which is on a Windows 2000 server, about 40,000 jobs appear there every 30
minutes. There are a few real jobs but most are "remote downlevel
documents", needless to say this shuts down printing and we have to spend a
lot of time deleting those jobs out of the queue and also the
\\winnt\system32\spool\printers folder (*spl files of 0kb and *.shd files of
2kb). The question is is there a configuration setting that we missed in
setting up the new PCs, especially since this did not occur before when the
PCs were Windows 95?