NOD32 causes network printer to print junk pages

Hi all. This is my first post here. I just switched our offices over to NOD32 from NAV after getting so fed up with NAV's high-maintenance, high-resource-usage, and Symantec's draconian licensing policies, that I finally researched the alternatives and discovered NOD32. Very happy so far, as is everyone else I've convinced to try NOD (I'm inclined to think there's a huge market of IT admins who would switch to NOD if they only knew it existed...)

Anyway...

I am having a problem. We have a Savin 2535p B/W copier/printer. It's got its own static IP and the office computers print to it directly over TCP/IP.

Problem is, print jobs (from MS Word, but I don't really think it matters what app we're printing from) occasionally are preceded by around 2-10 pages of junk pages. By "junk pages" I mean a blank page with 1 or 2 lines of random ASCII characters. Of note is the fact that the name of the computer that the print job originated from appears somewhere in that line or two of otherwise-random characters and symbols. Also note that the printed document does eventually print up, intact, after all the junk pages. (actually it may be that the junk pages print *after* the actual document since the pages are set to print in reverse order)

Frustratingly, the problem is intermitent in nature, happening only occasionally, but happening a significant number of times per day and typically wasting 100-200 or more sheets of paper per day (which is NOT good!!!). I so far have been unable to establish any particular pattern or method for consistently reproducing the problem. Sometimes a few hours may go by with no junk prints, sometimes it happens several times in a 30-minute window, etc. No rhyme or reason that I've yet noticed.

The computers involved are all Windows 2000 machines with Office XP.

Why do I believe this to be a NOD32 problem?

1) The problem began immediately after I did a mass-install of NOD32 on all our systems.

2) On 2 of our systems, I disabled IMON/DMON/AMON/XMON, and the problem continued. I then stopped the NOD32 kernel service and disabled all related NOD32 processes from running (nod32kui) and that seems to have made the problem stop on those particular computers. (don't worry, the test systems are heavily firewalled and are only allowed to connect to the network printer).

I've tried switching to different printer drivers (at Savin's suggestion), but this had no effect.

I don't think the problem is related to our previous NAV 2004 installations since we do have one computer (which has exhibited this printing problem) that has never had any A/V software prior to NOD32 intalled on it (because I happened to just do a fresh Windows 2000 install on it last week).

We're running Kerio Personal Firewall, but again, I've seen the problem happen on systems that don't have and have never had Kerio, so I don't think that's related, although I did mass-install Kerio on almost all the systems the same day I mass-installed NOD32).

Any theories, or suggestions for further troubleshooting? It's painful to see so much paper being wasted! (not to mention all the productivity problems this is causing, of course)

 

Hi Liquidmetal, welcome to Wilders.

With this issue can you please send an email to support@nod32.com and place a link to this thread. If you do not hear from Eset within 3 days (allows for weekends), please advise us here...

We would appreciate if you could keep us in the loop with your progress, as we all learn this way…

Cheers

 

Do you have print job separator pages turned on for that printer queue or on the individual machines? If so, try adding "|SEP|" (without the quotes) to the extension exclusion list for AMON on each machine. I know it sounds weird...

Jack

 

I haven't any troubles with NOD (AMON+IMON) and Network printers...

 

I have had the same weird problem for about a year now. I did not think it was due to NOD32. But now you mention it, it started after I installed NOD32 here. If ANY printer is shared on the network (not just TCP/IP) this will happen. It is annoying to say the least.

 

Is your printer a PostScript printer?

I have had problems for years with PostScript printers doing just what you are describing. Sometimes, it starts with no changes or alterations to any part of the pc. I get reams of paper full of symbols and wingdings and ASCII characters.


Have you tried doing an Un-Install of the printer drivers and re-install them?

This usually works for me

 

I wish we did (so I could try your solution), but nope.

I'm actually not sure off-hand whether it's a Postscript printer...probably something I should know...I'll check on that next time I'm in the office.

I've tried numerous times re-installing the printer drivers on many people's computers, as well as trying a couple different drivers. Generally we use the RPCS drivers, which we've re-installed many times. Now, I have NOT tried un-installing the driver (and the network printer) before re-installing it, only re-installing the driver, so maybe there's some chance of that working.

Just contacted Eset yesterday, FYI.