Printing Problems and Cancel Print Problems

[Rich]

I have two printing problems, one of which is caused by the other.

Printer is an HP2000c inkjet printer, using WinXP Home (and the drivers
that come with it). This mostly happens on my wife's computer, but has
occasionally happened on mine (which is set up similar to hers).

1) Every once in a while (haven't figured out what is the variable, but
it's about once a week in our home setting) instead of printing a sheet
containing a picture, the printer will start printing gibberish, about a
line or two to a page and start zipping through paper like crazy.

I've tried replacing the parallel cable and swapping printers (I've got
a couple of spares) to no avail. I've thought about reloading the
driver, but haven't tried that yet.

2) When this happens, I try cancelling the print job. It might take 10
or even 20 minutes for this to take effect. Of course, I have to shut
the printer off to keep it from chewing through half a ream of paper,
but I understand that the printer must be on in order for the cancel to
take work. So sometimes I stand there with a half a dozen sheets of
paper and feed them into the printer, picking up the printed sheets to
feed back into the printer. Wastes some ink, but minimizes wasted paper.

I found a little DOS routine that is supposed to empty the print spool
when invoked, but that doesn't seem to be of much help.

Ten minutes minimum, and last week once it took 20.

I sure would welcome suggestions to cure either or both of these annoyances!

Rich

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

I think it's more likely that your printer drivers have become corrupted.
First thing to try is an uninstall and reinstall:

http://www.coribright.com/windows/Article_One.htm