Print dialog takes ages to appear with Versant 80 with Fiery RIP

[AndrewB1234]

Thanks Joe. Fuji Xerox support sent me a link to a new printer driver that was released late last year and I'm waiting for IT to come around and install it (they have our machines locked tight so I can't do it myself, hence my irritability in the last post, sorry). I'll follow up with them about anything else that needs to be applied: we were told to have auto updates to the Fiery turned off.

[Joe Arseneau]

Windows itself needs a patch.

The patched driver needs to be used on the client.

The Fiery itself needs the patch.

If any of the 3 don't have the patch, the issue still occurs.

And the patch as far as I can tell, does not work with Windows 10.

[AndrewB1234]

...and today, first day back after the clocks have gone back the problem has returned. Will get IT to reinstall the drivers and report if that's fixed it. Why is this still even an issue??

[AndrewB1234]

Thanks for your help Joe. Reinstalling the print driver on client machines appears to have been the solution.

I called Xerox about upgrading the RIP, and was advised by Level 2 support to not to do it myself as the updates are for the US (I'm in Australia) and may not neccessarily be compatible with what Fuji Xerox in Australia configure. For this reason they also advise that we're not to have automatic updates switched on. They sent a technician around today who updated everything to 1.2, then we reinstalled the drivers on the two PCs with problems and all is now as it should be.

The reason I think it was reinstalling the driver that fixed it was that we have a PC that had the Versant 80 set up on it after daylight savings switched over, and that one was working fine (I hadn't thought to check it before). It was only the two machines that had been set up before the daylight savings switch that were having issues.

[Joe Arseneau]

Xerox is not responsible for the install of your drivers or updates. That is all on your IT. (Xerox Analysts are not covered by any maintenance agreement, they are at a cost)

EFI provides patches straight to their RIPs, all your IT needs to do is set it to do updates and give the Fiery a DNS server so it can look for them.

1.2 is a patch to 1.1 and came out July 3 2015, so they either have it set to not update or have not set the DNS so it can. This can be seen easily enough by opening Webtools and going to the Configure tab and selecting the Check for product Updates link

For the FS100Pro Fiery it will be listed as this:

You can just reinstall the current driver with the same files already located in the c:\PRNTDRVR folder on the PC, just delete the printer and reinstall but choose the "Replace" option when prompted and the issue will be gone, the corruption happens in the driver files in the C:\Windows\System32\spool location.

[AndrewB1234]

Thank you for those answers: changing the settings doesn't seem to have helped anything, however the problem does seem to have appeared after a daylight savings change. I was in another office for 6 weeks and the printer was unused over that time, but the clocks changed over while we were away which correlates with that bug.

I went to the Fiery website to download drivers and I had the choice of 1.0 or 1.2. According to the printer name (in my driver) I have 1.1, so not sure what to do. I have asked my local IT to look into it but I think we might ask Xerox to update it all for us just to be sure. If we do have 1.1 can it be upgraded to 1.2 as far as you know, or are you stuck with the version you get when the printer is installed? Seems odd there is no choice given for 1.1.

[Joe Arseneau · Accepted solution]

EFI link with an explanation from their own forum. (Direct link to pdf file warning)

Also things mentioned here and here and here

[Joe Arseneau]

EFI had some really weird issues caused by DST with various drivers. I believe they fixed it for most models but can only confirm it was resolved for sure with the 560.

Best bet for unfixed drivers is to disable the following 3 things.

But, as stated, EFI has pretty much solved the issue with newer drivers, but those drivers cannot be found on Xerox.com, always get the drivers for EFI rips from EFI.

Things to note, make sure you don't just update the current driver, remove it, remove the port and install fresh. And keep this issue in your mind as DST is about to end, and if the driver has not been fixed, it will happen soon after November 1st.

[AndrewB1234]

I've been having a problem recently where it's taking 7-10 seconds for the print dialog to appear in InDesign when I have my Versant 80 set as my default printer. If I choose another printer (another networked Xerox copier, a 7775) as my default it comes up after a second or so. 

I also experience very slow scrolling performance in Word when the V80 is the default and it's very quick with the 7775 set as the default (I believe Word uses the printer driver to render the page as you're working, or something like that?).

I'm pretty sure this wasn't the case when it was first installed but I'm struggling to think what has changed in the meantime (I was away for 6 weeks and I'm pretty sure the problem appeared during that time). I work for a large company so any amount of IT things could have gone on in the background.

Anyone got any ideas? I was hopeful about a suggestion on another forum about disabling 2-way communication, and although this helps when going into print preferenced from the print dialog (which also took an age) it doesn't seem to affect the amount of time the print dialog takes to appear in the first place.