Windows OS

Just in case anyone runs into this out in the field, because it can be a bit puzzling until you read KB article 923218.

Previously, if you had SNMP Status enabled for the printer in question, with 2000/2003 RTM/SP1, and the printer never responded to the SNMP request, it still listed the printer as Online.

If the printer is not listening for SNMP traffic *or* a firewall is in the way, the printer will get marked as Offline even though it will happily take requests from any other non-SP2 print spooler.

It isn’t terribly well documented, but it has bitten some people with their remote printers. Most people end up rolling back to SP1, but you don’t need to if you configure your servers and printers correctly!

Simple fix: Either enable SNMP on the printer and make sure you can snmpwalk the printer from the print server, or uncheck the SNMP Status for the printer on the SP2 print server.

Related links: here and here.

You can sum it up as:
PDANet (any version) plus Motorola Q plus Vista SP1 beta = failure after 10 seconds.

Very interesting problem that I have been fighting for a week or two.

I suspect there is something in SP1 (maybe related to SSTP or NAP?) that the PPP servers at Verizon do not like. I've even changed around all the normal PDANet PPP settings to not use LCP extensions and other settings but this always remains the same:

I can get a connection and browse with PDANet 1.80 and Vista SP1 for about 10 seconds and then the connection drops and disconnects rather harshly.

Rollback to RTM Vista and it works fine.

I've even disabled the SSTP IP Helper in Device Manager, no go.

For now when I am on the road and without a net connection, I've been booting up an XP SP3 virtual machine in VMWare using the USB-passthru and connecting that way. I use a loopback adapter on Vista that makes the host machine a client of the XP VM's ICS. It is a very esoteric setup I will admit, but I at least can get some network connectivity to my Vista host machine this way.

XP SP3 should be noted - it makes me think the SSTP/NAP stuff might not be the overall issue causing the connection failures.

Has anyone else seen this or have a work around?