Home Forums Discussions Problems Printing issue - Any suggestions?

I have had an issue with printing from my exam room computers to my front desk Canon printer. If I try to print tracked data or print an encounter, it prints immediately to the front desk. However, when I try to print an order (which uses the Report Screen) it takes about 30 seconds. This issue is really starting to effect my efficiency. Does anyone know what is different about the print pathway when using the Report Screen vs printing from other areas of AC? If everything were slow, I would think that it was a network issue, but since the problem varies depending on what section of AC I am printing from, I think it is an AC issue. Any ideas are appreciated.

Sometimes the memory for the printers is not enough to handle certain items. We have had similar problems w/ PDF's. Therefore, we just email the order to the check-out person, which she looks at for each patient as they come by her desk. That way, the printer is bypassed.

Ed, I think we have the same issue... it takes up to 30 seconds after you select the items in the order screen and push "Print Orders" for the order sheet to appear, but then actual printing is fairly quick, right? If so, then it is not the printer memory, as the print job has not yet been sent to the printer. If the issue is that it is slow to have the printer selection box show up after you hit "print" from the actual order sheet, make sure the print drivers are installed on your client machine and not on the network. We had issues when IT put the drivers on the server.... easy for them to administer, bad for performance. But, if the issue is the first one, I, too, would love some help here.

It sounds as though he is saying that "after" it is loaded in the window that it takes 30 seconds to print. And, there really shouldn't be a need for more than 8Mb of memory to send one sheet of paper to the printer.

This is weird. Since AC is quirky and support may not be able to help right away, I would start with the printer.

I am sure you have already done this, but I would make sure you have the latest print driver and/or firmware. Could you tell us more about your Canon printer? Model, etc. This wouldn't explain your issue, but I had to purchase a pretty good Dell printer so my receptionist would have a 5 second to first page out rather than the 37 second to first page out on our $8,000 printer. But, I must say once it kicks in, it is nearly 50 ppm. But, then again, so is the Dell.

But, that should be an issue with both windows unless you are printing out a lot back to back before the print engine dies down again.

So, print driver first, then if that makes no difference, try printing to a different printer. If it is the same to both, I would bit the bullet and get a nice little Dell or HP printer for the front. By the way, we added 128Mb of RAM which brings us to 160. Don't ask me why. I would look at spooling too, but that shouldn't change either.

Actually, It takes about 15 seconds for the print box to appear and another 15 for it to finally send the job to the printer (total of 30 seconds). The printer is a fairly new ( 2 years old) Canon ImageClass 300. Print drivers are updated and reside on the exam room computer. The Exam rooms are running Vista Business and the computer that the printer is attached to is XP Professional. We are running P2P not a network server. What I do not understand is why there is the difference between printing (for example) tracked data (fast) vs an order (slow). Also, if I print a prescription (which also uses the print box) it is slow like when I print an order. But get this, my prescription printer (Star) is DIRECTLY connected to the exam room computer I am printing from. This suggests that the delay is in Amazing Charts, since the exam room computer must send info to the AC server computer and wait for it to send back data before it can dump the data to the prescription printer to print.

By the way, what the heck happened to my cool eyeball Avatar???

[quote=Ed]This suggests that the delay is in Amazing Charts, since the exam room computer must send info to the AC server computer and wait for it to send back data before it can dump the data to the prescription printer to print.[\quote]
Are you sure that is how it works? When you need a script or a chart it is in SQL Server's database. When you select that chart, AC sends a query to SQL, which then sends that data to you then. It is now in random memory in AC. If you then load a progress note or script into a window, it should print directly from your computer as the data is there. Try it. Bring up the document to print, then disable your NIC card or unplug your Ethernet card, then print. It will print.

I am certainly not suggesting that it is not AC. I think your situation is very strange. I am not sure why it takes so long to print to the Star when we print in less than a second over the network. Even though you are P2P, I would still try to get a printer that is on the network up front. I know, if one is fast, the other should be as well.

Food for thought: (hope I don't offend you) I want to try to help. I find that a lot of times when there are issues on here, the first thing users do is blame SQL or AC. Now from what you said, I can see why. I tend to right away think it is something wrong with my printer, print driver or how I have AC set up. Not because I am super-troubleshooter-don't-bother-tech-support-guy, but because I just always think that way. Now think about it. If it were AC (and again it certainly may), it would see that more would have this issue. For instance everyone on this thread has mentioned the lag of bringing up the order window, me included. I have no idea why it does that. Likely, bad programming and no desire for the programmer to go back and look.

Does this happen in your other rooms? If not, then there is evidence that it is specifically your room's computer. Print drivers are strange beings with way may settings than necessary.

I still think more people on here should try the Experts Exchange website. It is an unbelievable resource, and you do get a free six-day trial. They may just tell you it is the program. Since many other work, have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling. What happens when you turn spooling off?

Just some thoughts.

When the board crashed, it took all the avatars with it. You will have to put it back I guess.

Bert, No offense taken. When I say the problem might be with AC, I am not criticizing the program. I really don't think that it is a problem with AC per se, but some way that I have things set up. You know, it is interesting that this issue with printing started about 2 to 3 months ago, and I cannot for the life of me think what change I made that brought this on. Before this began, I could quickly print from each exam computer to the front printer. Possibly, the issue may have started when I did a Windows Vista update on all of my exam room computers a few months ago, but if that were the case it did not begin right away. I will continue to investigate this issue and I will consider trying Experts Exchange. I will also try the spooling thing. If I get a fix, I will post it for all to see. By the way, I heard through a reliable source that Bill Gates secretly uses a Mac.

After 9 years as a user and being the quiet bystander I might have a suggestion. Had similar problem with printing to UpDox, ie slow response. Disabled Microsoft Exchange on my server (didn't use it anyway) and low and behold printing to UpDox was rapid, almost instantaneous. Might be something to look at if you have a server running Windows Server 2003.

So where on Windows Server do you disable Exchange???

Disable Exchange? Blasphemy! No, just kidding Sam.

At Ed,

No, it could be AC. I don't know. I just want you to have a better chance by looking at it at all angles. Have you tried any of the troubleshooting steps? Can you print to a different printer and still have the same problem. If Sam is correct, disabling the NIC card teporarily after you bring up the window should show that. Again, reinstall AC on that printer.

Experts-Exchange is your best bet.

If you want I can throw the question up there.

When I 'print to default printer' when I print a prescription, the button grays out and it takes 20-30 seconds to refresh and go to the printer. Should it be doing this?

Seems to be a lot of print issues with 5.15 and up. But, still try updating your print drivers.

Well, I was hopeful, but we are using Server 2008 and don't have Exchange installed.

Bert, my issue, at least, comes up in the stage BEFORE selecting the printer, so I don't think I can blame the drivers. I hit "print order", and it sits there for 20 seconds or so, then the order appears. Once I'm at that stage, selecting the printer and having it print actually go pretty fast. Any ideas?

I think I found a fix! At least it worked for me. What I did was uninstall my printer from my exam room computers and re-install it as a LOCAL printer as follows:

Go to Control Panel. Choose printer. Then choose Add Printer.

Choose Add a local printer. Click on Create a new port. The default in
the drop down box is Local Port. Do not change that. Click Next.

A dialogue box will appear asking for you to enter a port name. Type in
the \\computer name\\printer name ie. My computer's name is WS1 and the
printer name is canonima so I typed in \\WS1\\canonima.

The weird thing is is that if I put a single backslash after WS1, it didn't work, but with a double backslash, it did (???). If you try it one way and it doesn't work, try it the other.

My print box now comes up instantly and the print job executes immediately. I am one happy camper... : )

Does that work with a network printer?

David,

I believe that is what he is talking about, although I think the terminology Local Printer is confusing. Microsoft's most confusing thing they ever did was how they set up Printer Sharing and Adding. When you add a printer, it will ask if you want to use "Local printer attached to this computer" or the Plug and Play, which would definitely be your choice if the printer were connected directly to your PC by USB or whatever.

It also has an option which allows you to find the printer by checking the radio box of "A network printer, or attached to another printer. If a printer is a network printer, your PC should find it. It depends on how it is shared. And, it depends on how Microsoft is feeling that day.

Many times, you have to choose Local printer. If there is no port already, (no other printer connected via an IP or whatever), then you generally would make a new port and select Standard TCP/IP port. If you already have a computer connected to it, then there is already an IP address port such as 192.168.1.16. You can choose this, add a print driver and you are all set. If you try to add the same IP, it will just tell you it is already there.

I am not familiar with using the Local Port, but it seemed to work for ED, although the UNC path is rather weird as he pointed out.

Good job Ed. Glad it worked out for you. And, thanks for getting back to everyone.

No. Call AC support and do NOT get off the phone until they fix it. That's crazy.

My problem is fixed. ( the 30 second delay waiting for print pages to load and for prescriptions to print)
I use a network printer.
I found the printer on my main computer that houses AC was set to share. In fact all of the printers were set to share.
(my main computer uses vista os; all of the other ones use xp)
Also there was a new printer driver released.
I reinstalled all of the drivers and set them up not to be shared.
Now it works well

Well, I am this much closer..

My PA and I did a side by side comparison of how long it took an orders sheet to appear after we clicked the "Print orders" button. Same wireless network, same everything, but two different laptops. Hers took about one second; mine took about 25 seconds. So, at least we know where to look.

I found this issue:

If I switched default printers, the problem disappeared. This was true even if I was not choosing that printer to do the printing, and the printer selection box had not yet come up. Obviously, the computer thinks it knows what printer you are going to choose and then offers you the option to change later. I thought that it would wait to load the driver until after I had chosen, but that is not the case.

David,

What do you mean by "thought that it would wait to load the driver until after I had chosen, but that is not the case?"

I assumed the program would not do anything about printers until I asked it to print something, then decide what it had to do based on which printer I selected. It obviously is setting itself up for the "slow" (default) printer, before I even have the chance to tell it if that is not my choice. I guess I assume that has something to do with loading the driver for the printer daemon.

You should only have to load a print driver once.