Question : Problem: Clients hang (with repeated EventID 20) when printing from Word 2000 to HP 5100tn printer over TCP/IP

Here's a strange one.

Recently purchased a HP Laserjet 5100TN printer for one of our remote offices.  The printer uses built in Jet direct via TCP/IP and prints fine from the Print Server as well as test pages from any Win2K SP3 Client that adds the printer.  Certain applications (notepad, ie6) print fine.

However, as soon as a client tries to print from Word 2000 (Office 9 SP3) the application hangs and the System Event Log records the Warning Event ID 20 from Source:Print (3 per second), and fills a 20 MB event log rather quickly.  The contents of the Event follow:
--------------------------------------------
Printer Driver HP LaserJet 5100 PCL 6 for Windows NT x86 Version-3 was added or updated. Files:- HPBF252G.DLL, HPBF252E.DLL, HPBF252I.PMD, HPBF252E.HLP, HPBAFD32.DLL, HPBFTM32.DLL, HPNRA.EXE, HPBOID.EXE, HPBPRO.EXE, HPPAPML0.EXE, HPBNRAC2.DLL, HPBMIAPI.DLL, HPBOIDPS.DLL, HPBPROPS.DLL, HPJCMN2U.DLL, HPJIPX1U.DLL, HPPAPTS0.DLL, HPPASNM0.DLL, HPPAPML0.DLL, HPBMINI.DLL, HPBF252G.HPI, HPBMMON.DLL, HPDOMON.DLL, HPBHEALR.DLL.


---------------------------------------------
The only way to make the system stop adding events to the log is to forcably terminate the application (winword.exe). I have tried the PCL5e driver too and get the same results.

This happens using either a Win2K Standard TCP/IP Port, or an HP Standard TCP/IP port (not sure of the difference here).

Any ideas, this Word voodoo is lame?

Answer : Problem: Clients hang (with repeated EventID 20) when printing from Word 2000 to HP 5100tn printer over TCP/IP

Most of the references I have been able to find concerning event id 20 talk about it being an informational message, and that you can adjust the way printer messages are displayed to fix. I'm not really sure what is going on here, but here is some information that you might find useful.

1. Have you tried the latest Winwk drivers from the HP web-site?
2. I typically setup Win2k printers as follows:
Install the printer on the server as a local (lpt1) device using the latest drivers for your OS, but don't send a test page. Next, go into the printer properties and create a new port (standard tcp/ip) and then point the new printer at that port. Now you can run a test page, and this should work. Next, go to the workstations and install a network printer using the latest drivers. If the server and the workstations are both Win2k, the workstations should pull the same driver version as the server.
3. Have you tried re-installing MS Office?

Also, you might look over the following MS article:
Q234330 - especially if this is Terminal server.