Printing uses 100% of the processor

[Bill W]

I have 2 XP SP2 PCs communicating on a wired home network through a router.
One of the 2 PCs has a LaserJet series II printer attached to it through a
parallel port. The printer is shared and is used by both computers.
Regardless of which PC initiates the print job, the performance monitor
shows processor utilization at 100% on the computer that has the printer
attached to it. I have searched everywhere on the internet looking for a
solution. I have reinstalled drivers and checked settings. Does anyone
have any suggestions as to why a simple print job can show System processor
usage at 100%? Needless to say, I can do nothing while jobs are printing.
Thank you for your help with this very frustrating problem.

 

[Ghostrider]

I have 2 XP SP2 PCs communicating on a wired home network through a router.
One of the 2 PCs has a LaserJet series II printer attached to it through a
parallel port. The printer is shared and is used by both computers.
Regardless of which PC initiates the print job, the performance monitor
shows processor utilization at 100% on the computer that has the printer
attached to it. I have searched everywhere on the internet looking for a
solution. I have reinstalled drivers and checked settings. Does anyone
have any suggestions as to why a simple print job can show System processor
usage at 100%? Needless to say, I can do nothing while jobs are printing.
Thank you for your help with this very frustrating problem.

The HP LaserJet Series II printer is both old and slow. It
also has a very limited memory. All of this means that print
jobs need to be queued up and then spooled out to the printer.
These involve the processor. The solution would be to utilize
a modern laser printer that has both faster print speed and a
larger internal memory.

 

[BillW]

Thanks for your reply. I have been running this same printer on Win98 and
WinME without this problem. One of my PCs was upgraded from ME to XP. The
other was purchased with XP installed. This problem occurs regardless of
what computer I attach it to. The reason I posted on this site is because
is appears to be something specific to XP. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Plato]

I have 2 XP SP2 PCs communicating on a wired home network through a router.
One of the 2 PCs has a LaserJet series II printer attached to it through a
parallel port. The printer is shared and is used by both computers.
Regardless of which PC initiates the print job, the performance monitor
shows processor utilization at 100% on the computer that has the printer
attached to it. I have searched everywhere on the internet looking for a
solution. I have reinstalled drivers and checked settings. Does anyone
have any suggestions as to why a simple print job can show System processor
usage at 100%? Needless to say, I can do nothing while jobs are printing.
Thank you for your help with this very frustrating problem.

Quite normal.

 

[Plato]

Thanks for your reply. I have been running this same printer on Win98 and
WinME without this problem. One of my PCs was upgraded from ME to XP. The
other was purchased with XP installed. This problem occurs regardless of
what computer I attach it to. The reason I posted on this site is because
is appears to be something specific to XP. Thanks again for your help.

Again, quite normal for such an old printer.

 

[HeyBub]

Quite normal.

Nonsense. As a test, I dug out an old dot-matrix printer and sent 50 text
pages to it. During the entire print run, my CPU never got over 5%.

 

[HeyBub]

I have 2 XP SP2 PCs communicating on a wired home network through a
router. One of the 2 PCs has a LaserJet series II printer attached to
it through a parallel port. The printer is shared and is used by
both computers. Regardless of which PC initiates the print job, the
performance monitor shows processor utilization at 100% on the
computer that has the printer attached to it. I have searched
everywhere on the internet looking for a solution. I have
reinstalled drivers and checked settings. Does anyone have any
suggestions as to why a simple print job can show System processor
usage at 100%? Needless to say, I can do nothing while jobs are
printing. Thank you for your help with this very frustrating problem.

Try sending your printing to the printer "Generic Text/only" (the LJ2 will
discard all incoming data).

Check/tinker with your port settings for LPT1.