Page Setup or Print takes over a minute to open in Crystal

Id bet this is a printer setup issue. do you have similar issues when printing from other desktop apps?

Mary, are you seeing this when running crystal on the server or your desktop? I would look at two things. What is the default printer and where is it in the network. Also are you using "page x of y" in your report?

It happens from any of our desktops when we use any network printer - we tried Adobe PDF as a printer too - and it happens on any report
whether we use page x of y or not.

Does it matter how much data is in the report?

Data doesn't appear to have any bearing - if I just create a blank report and then open up page setup it still takes over a minute to open

What about other apps, are they also slow to bring up the page setup?
How many printers are defined on the machine?

I actually had a client with this issue a long time ago im pretty sure. i really need to start logging these. What version of Crystal are you on? Have you tried apply SP4 if youre on XI R2? Also, just to isolate, try checking No Printer in Page Setup and see if that problem goes away. I think its pretty obvious that its printer driver related but just to be sure.

We are on Crystal 12.3.0.601 and checking No Printer does not change the file open time. And we have tried SP4.
I checked my machine and there are 40 printers defined - most of which I don't use - so I deleted all of them except
for the 4 that I use and it took my opening time down to about 15 seconds. So is that closer to normal or should it be
instantaneous?

Deleted all printers except for 1 and Adobe PDF - opening time is now 4 seconds.

Mary, I'm making assumptions here based off what you've said, but it sounds as if you are on the network of at least a semi-large company if you've got over 40 printers avaliable to print on. Which would imply that your network admin has intelligently broken up the internal network into a group of subnets.

In this event, the likely issue is that the printers you are attempting to print to are not on the same subnet as you are.

When you open the print window, Windows queries all the network printers you have set up to update their queue status (along with other things) using SNMP. SNMP by default does not cross subnet boundries to prevent the entire network from drowning in the traffic. So Window's query never actually reaches the printer.

As a result, printers that aren't in the same subnet as you will 'hang' the print dialog as Windows waits for the 'appropriate' timeout to the SNMP request.

And since Windows also tries to be 'polite', it'll queues up the requests, only sending out a new batch as requests are completed or time out. As a result, if you've only got a few printers installed, you'll get a short delay since all their queries are sent out at the same time and you only have one 'timeout' wait. But when you've got a bunch, you can hang for minutes as Windows works its way through the list, waiting for the previous set to timeout before sending off a new set.

I'm afraid the few times I've run into this issue I've only discovered two real solutions and one theoretical:

1. Install/Find a printer on the same subnet as you and use it instead of the others. Remove the rest so you don't hang while Windows queries them - this is the easiest IMO.

2. For each printer you need that you can't get on your own subnet, go into the properties of the printer and under the PORTS tab, make sure bidirectional is unchecked for the port being used. This may be difficult if your IT/IS department is attempting to protect you from yourself and has locked down those settings. This may also have other repercussions that are printer specific.

In theory, you could also ask your IT group if it were possible for them to set it up so SNMP packets were routed between subnets your subnets. It is doable, and if they have any router savy and are setup correctly, fairly easy (I'm told).

But experience tells me that if you are in this sort of situation in the first place it's either because they aren't setup to handle it or because they had a reason not to do it in the first place.

This of course is all based on assumptions, but it was the general cause behind this sort of problem every other time I've run into it.

Thank you all very much for the explanations - very logical - I really appreciate it! My systems guy tells me that 4 seconds is pretty darn good for crystal,
and so I'm happy as will be everyone that writes in crystal here. I sent the last reply from The.Sam.Groves to our systems people so if there is anymore information
to share about our environment I will put it in here.