Dawg Prints and Natasha

(Sounds like a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode.)
Sporadically, we are seeing this error message at the print release stations:  Unable to connect to Natasha (or something very much like that).
When this occurs, do CNTRL>ALT>DELETE and LOGOFF.
The machine will log off and automatically log back in.

Here's the explanation for what is happening from Dawg Prints Dean (IT guy):

I noticed that the station was looping on the page counter process, which determines how much a job will cost. I think what is happening here is that these are the jobs that would disappear into the ether before we changed the print server configuration. Now those corrupt jobs that would before be dumped by the server are showing up at the stations. When a person releases the corrupt jobs, the system is trying to count the pages so it knows what to charge, but because of the job issue it fails and loops. Eventually the server connection times out and kicks the station offline. This is my best guess based upon what Johnny and I encountered and the fact that you mention it was very sporadic.


I don’t know if there is a fix we can implement at this time, but we can take a look and see what our options are. This might be one of those rock and hard place situations (the server dumps it or the station fails). I also wanted to pass along a quick tip. When this occurs you don’t actually have to restart the whole station. If you hit ctrl+alt+del and select Log Off the account will auto login and refresh the station, freeing it from the loop. This is a lot faster than waiting for the entire station to restart.  

- Adam