KB142370 - Printing to HP Laserjet Printer Results in Event 2004

Article ID: 142370

Article Last Modified on 2/20/2007

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5
Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q142370

SYMPTOMS

If you attempt to print to an LPD Print Server or a Hewlett-Packard (HP) LaserJet printer with a JetDirect network card the following event may appear in Event Viewer under the Application Log:

Event ID: 2004
Description: Printer on host x.x.x.x is rejecting our request.
Will retry until it accepts the request or the job is cancelled by the user.

CAUSE

This problem occurs if one of the following conditions are met:

Intermittent network problems such as congested routers, broken network segments or multiple hosts printing to the same printer.

-or-

Problem with the HP JetDirect card. Some JetDirect cards may not be compatible with LPD printing (RFC 1179). The card may need to be updated to a newer version (Firmware Revision 3.03 or above).

NOTE: If Firmware Revision is 3.15-4.08, please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base Article:

ARTICLE ID: 145716
TITLE : LPR Printing to JetDirect with Firmware 03.15 (or later) Fails

-or-
Improper configuration of the JetDirect card. For example, if the SYSLOG SERVER parameter is configured for an IP address of a non-existing server or a server that does not support the SYSLOG command, the first print job prints; however, subsequent print jobs results in an error. This is due to the JetDirect card attempting to send logging information to print server and suspends further printing until it accomplishes the task. If you power cycle the print device during this state, print jobs may print. However, the problem re-occurs immediately after the next print job completes. Windows NT does not support the SYSLOG SERVER command.

WORKAROUND

To troubleshoot this problem, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 102067
TITLE : SESSTIMEOUT Information

ARTICLE-ID: 141708
TITLE : Printing to LPD Printer Is Slow or Fails with Windows NT

Additional query words: prodnt

Keywords: kbprint KB142370