Right now I have a printer (most are HP Printer's) or 2 that is showing Offline on the Print Server. It is not checked offline on the Printer Property's and when it is checked to offline on the printer on the Server it says Offline -Offline. I can ping the printer. I can web to the printer. I know it is online. Yet when I print to it the job just hold in the queue doing nothing. Here is there really wierd part. The printer added to a workstation with driver's it works and prints to the network IP address.
It almost sounds like the print server cannot communicate with the printers that are showing offline. Are they on the same or different subnet? Can you ping the printer from the print server?
You need this hotfix. We had the same issue and after applying the fix and necessary registry entry, it works great. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946198 - Thee Chicago Wolf