Windows 2000 Professional Printing Problem

[roback]

I have a printing problem. I use a simple visual basic program to do
some billing for my office. I went to print a form out of it this
morning and did not put in a specific date range to print. Instead of a
blank form, pages and pages of random printer/printing information
started to pour out of my printer. I tried to print a word doc just to
see if it was a os issue or program specific, and it did the same thing.
I don't understand it. Is there some kind of endless loop spool file
that no matter what I try to print now gets sent to my printer??? What
do I do? I tried unplugging the connections from the printer and
rebooting with no avail. The only thing that rebooting and turning the
compuer off does is stops the paper from pouring out, but when I go to
print something it starts up again. Please help if you can!

 

[Mark Blain]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in

I have a printing problem. I use a simple visual basic program to do
some billing for my office. I went to print a form out of it this
morning and did not put in a specific date range to print. Instead of
a blank form, pages and pages of random printer/printing information
started to pour out of my printer. I tried to print a word doc just
to see if it was a os issue or program specific, and it did the same
thing. I don't understand it. Is there some kind of endless loop
spool file that no matter what I try to print now gets sent to my
printer??? What do I do? I tried unplugging the connections from the
printer and rebooting with no avail. The only thing that rebooting
and turning the compuer off does is stops the paper from pouring out,
but when I go to print something it starts up again. Please help if
you can!

The output sent to your printer is a mixture of text and control codes.
The control codes tell the printer where to position the text, what size,
what font etc. If you turn off the printer in the middle of printing,
the part of the file already sent to the printer's memory is wiped out,
but Windows doesn't know that. When you turn the printer back on,
Windows resumes sending the rest. The leftover control codes and text
get misunderstood by the printer and you get garbage.

Here's one explanation of how to clear out the unwanted leftovers:
"Clearing the Print Queue in Windows"
http://www.computer-2tr.com/tips/05/20050815.html

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a printing problem. I use a simple visual basic program to do
some billing for my office. I went to print a form out of it this
morning and did not put in a specific date range to print. Instead of a
blank form, pages and pages of random printer/printing information
started to pour out of my printer. I tried to print a word doc just to
see if it was a os issue or program specific, and it did the same thing.
I don't understand it. Is there some kind of endless loop spool file
that no matter what I try to print now gets sent to my printer??? What
do I do? I tried unplugging the connections from the printer and
rebooting with no avail. The only thing that rebooting and turning the
compuer off does is stops the paper from pouring out, but when I go to
print something it starts up again. Please help if you can!

Mark added a link to his excellent explanation. The link explains
that deleting all jobs from the printer queue (via the Control Panel)
will fix most of these problems. Unfortunately the rest of that page
is inaccurate. Stopping/restarting the printer queue will NOT
clear it, nor will rebooting the machine. However, the following
batch file will:
@echo off
echo.
echo Purging the print queue . . .
net stop Spooler
echo Deleting all print jobs . . .
ping localhost -n 4 > nul
del /q %SystemRoot%\system32\spool\printers\*.*
net start Spooler
echo Done!
ping localhost -n 4 > nul

Save the above code in c:\WinNT\Purge.bat, then create a shortcut
on your desktop that points to it.

 

[Mark Blain]

Mark added a link to his excellent explanation...

Actually, I linked to somebody else's explanation.
Thank you for spotting that part of it's incorrect. I'd been looking for
something with screenshots of the process, but that's the best I came up
with. Microsoft offers the following:

"How to cancel printing or to delete a print job that is stuck in the print
queue in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946737