I've had one particular network printer (installed on a local TCP/IP port) that has been incredibly slow since we've had it installed: it seems to be some bottleneck with the process of communicating with the printer in general, since even opening the printer properties window (or switching tabs within that window) can take 5-10 seconds, and sending over a print job generally hangs the sending application for a similar amount of time. However, pings are fine (<1ms), and two other network printers configured similarly work just fine, and I've exhausted most other possibilities (cabling, network hardware, port settings) for solving the issue.
However, it appears to be an odd bug in Windows, the workaround for which may not work in all cases, but seems to fix this issue. I had the printer installed on a local TCP/IP port (it has a built-in print server with a static IP), but by following this advice, I assigned the NetBIOS name for the printer to an unused LPT port at a command prompt:
net use LPT2 \\printserver\printername
And then, in the printer's Properties window, under the Ports tab, I changed the port from the TCP/IP port I had originally used to LPT2.
Voila - instant fix.
More secure motherboard heatsinks
September 11th, 2007
Apparently there's an oft overlooked trend in motherboard manufacturing: despite chipset and component cooling solutions growing ever more massive, these heatsinks continue to be secured to the board with cheap, unreliable plastic pins. Luckily these can be replaced with machine screws with minimal effort.