printing slows down computer

[Robert M Jones]

XP Home, HP Deskjet 710C, Sempron 2000+, 1Gb RAM, HDD Seagate 200GB
Norton AV 2006 Active Protection, Zone Alarm free version.

How can I prevent my printer slowing down my computer unduly when
printing a long job? I thought my upgrade from a slow old AMDK6-2 450MHz
machine with 512Mb RAM running win98SE to my current system would
improve things but the new machine is almost as slow when the printer is
running as the old one. Tips/settings welcome please. - either for
specific programs or for the printer settings as a whole (although the
XP driver for my HPDeskjet 710C is not a very good or well featured one
- much inferior to the old HP Win98SE driver)

It is currently set to "spool print jobs so the program finishes
printing faster" and "Start printing immediately".

AV and other security in place, scans clean for viruses, spyware etc.
Disks not fragmented, 1GB of spare disk space on the C: partition.

Many thanks.

--
Rev Robert M Jones, Wimborne Baptist Church, UK
http://www.wimborne-baptist.org.uk
Free trial of Mailwasher Pro - effective email spam filter - (commission
goes to our partners in Bulgaria)
http://fta.firetrust.com/index.cgi?id=420

 

[Gordon]

XP Home, HP Deskjet 710C, Sempron 2000+, 1Gb RAM, HDD Seagate 200GB Norton
AV 2006 Active Protection, Zone Alarm free version.

How can I prevent my printer slowing down my computer unduly when printing
a long job? I thought my upgrade from a slow old AMDK6-2 450MHz machine
with 512Mb RAM running win98SE to my current system would improve things
but the new machine is almost as slow when the printer is running as the
old one. Tips/settings welcome please. - either for specific programs or
for the printer settings as a whole (although the XP driver for my
HPDeskjet 710C is not a very good or well featured one - much inferior to
the old HP Win98SE driver)

It is currently set to "spool print jobs so the program finishes printing
faster" and "Start printing immediately".

AV and other security in place, scans clean for viruses, spyware etc.
Disks not fragmented, 1GB of spare disk space on the C: partition.

Many thanks.

I suspect you can't do much about it - most DeskJet printers are
"Winprinters" AFAIK and use part of the CPU to make up for lack of onboard
RAM.....

 

[DatabaseBen]

1 well, LaserJet are cheaper now a days
and do a real fast and professional job.
I love my Hp's, have 1 laser for envelopes,
1 laser for documents and 1 color/scanner for
for everything else.

2 the driver that came with the printer
may not be efficient. You should check
out the hp website for updated drivers.

3 only use the drivers from hp, the extras
like their picture software's are bloated
and consume memory from your pc.

4 switch to a lower dpi like 300 for printing.

5 to print documents/files, don't open the parent
program. Instead open file explorer, find the files
and right click on them and select print.

6 experiment with printing your documents to pdf, then print the pdf's.
PrimoPDF and Foxfire are freewares that can help.

hope these tips are helpful. but if none work, then maybe
some pc maintenance is required like from programs like
systemmechanice. But let us know first..... Ok?

 

[Robert M Jones]

1 well, LaserJet are cheaper now a days
and do a real fast and professional job.
I love my Hp's, have 1 laser for envelopes,
1 laser for documents and 1 color/scanner for
for everything else.

2 the driver that came with the printer
may not be efficient. You should check
out the hp website for updated drivers.

3 only use the drivers from hp, the extras
like their picture software's are bloated
and consume memory from your pc.

4 switch to a lower dpi like 300 for printing.

5 to print documents/files, don't open the parent
program. Instead open file explorer, find the files
and right click on them and select print.

6 experiment with printing your documents to pdf, then print the pdf's.
PrimoPDF and Foxfire are freewares that can help.

hope these tips are helpful. but if none work, then maybe
some pc maintenance is required like from programs like
systemmechanice. But let us know first..... Ok?

Thanks for the above.
Driver options are limited. There is NO updated HP driver for XP, just
the cut down one that came with XP itself,- even automatic duplex
printing is almost impossible - much less functionality than in the
original HP drivers supplied for Win98SE - I've been into that one in
some depth!

I'll investigate the printing direct from Explorer - initial tests
suggest it may be putting less strain on the CPU but of course it
doesn't offer me any options - just goes ahead and prints the whole
document. As duplex printing is dodgy I often need to print page by page
to get double sided.

I'll also try the pdf option you suggest - I already have Cute PDF
Printer and Foxit Reader.

I'm fairly sure the PC itself is in good shape; - I only just built it
and its a clean XP SP2 install and regularly hosed down with defrag, AV
and various antispyware scans, and CCleaner.

--
Rev Robert M Jones, Wimborne Baptist Church, UK
http://www.wimborne-baptist.org.uk
Free trial of Mailwasher Pro - effective email spam filter - (commission
goes to our partners in Bulgaria)
http://fta.firetrust.com/index.cgi?id=420

 

[DatabaseBen]

yeh,
it may be simply time to get
an updated printer. when
i upgraded to xp i sadly lost
the use of a great scanner and another
"expensive" printer.

i concluded that the scanner,
printing and some digital camera makers
don't want to make an updated driver
for free for xp when they can sell a whole piece
of machine for xp instead.

did you check the properties of the printer
in the print/fax control window? Isn't there
an adjustment that allocates the priority of
the printjob? Maybe this will give your pc
some power back during printing...

 

[DatabaseBen]

incidentally, have you tried printing
via safemode? you should see how
the pc acts when printing in the safemode
environment. this might be helpful to
review other causes to the problem, if any..

 

[Robert M Jones]

yeh,
it may be simply time to get
an updated printer. when
i upgraded to xp i sadly lost
the use of a great scanner and another
"expensive" printer.

i concluded that the scanner,
printing and some digital camera makers
don't want to make an updated driver
for free for xp when they can sell a whole piece
of machine for xp instead.

did you check the properties of the printer
in the print/fax control window? Isn't there
an adjustment that allocates the priority of
the printjob? Maybe this will give your pc
some power back during printing...

I've discovered that turning off "print in background" in the Options
part of the print menu in Word 2003 seems to improve things a great deal
as far as computer performance goes. I'm not really bothered how long
things take to print, just so long as I can use the computer for other
things without it getting jerky during a print job. So I think with that
change I've solved the problem. Thanks for your input.

--
Rev Robert M Jones, Wimborne Baptist Church, UK
http://www.wimborne-baptist.org.uk
Free trial of Mailwasher Pro - effective email spam filter - (commission
goes to our partners in Bulgaria)
http://fta.firetrust.com/index.cgi?id=420