Printer Suddenly Printing Garbage

[Doug Baker]

I have an Epson Stylus Color II printer which used to
work just fine under Windows XP. Over the last few weeks
it has started printing pages of garbage (control
characters?). At first it was just when printing Web
pages, but now it happens from any application, including
Notepad, and when printing a test page. I have tried
deleting and reinstalling the printer and printer driver,
to no avail. Epson does not provide a drive for this
printer under XP, saying to use XP's built in driver.
Windows update does not find any driver updates. I have
not changed anything on my system in the last few weeks
other than to run Windows update. I see that several
other people have posted similar problems in the last few
days, but have not gotten any response. Can someone out
there PLEASE HELP?!

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

First thing I would do is a complete antivirus scan, ensure you have the
latest signatures.

Then I would uninstall and reinstall the printer.

http://www.coribright.com/Windows/Article One.htm

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[Doug Baker]

Cari -
Scanning for viruses with the current signature file
is the first thing I did. This problem is so strange that
I was almost *hoping* to find one, but TrendMicro
reported my system clean.
I saw your article below and tried to follow it, but
Epson does not provide any 2000/XP drivers for this
printer, and hence there is no .exe to run in step 7. All
I can do is delete and reinstall XP's built in driver,
which I've now done several times. Any other suggestions,
or should I just throw in the towel and buy a new printer?