Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Network printers spit out garbage

0 helpful
4 replies

by mwinstead 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Some of my network printers will suddenly for no apparent reason begin to print page after page of wingding like garbage. It can go on for several hundred pages if you let it run its course. Unpluging the printer for a few minutes clears it up. It then might be ok for a few days or even as long as a week, then it will happen again. At first I suspected the BUGBEAR virus, but scans of all servers and desktops have turned up no virus infections of any kind. Anyone out there have any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike Winstead

4 replies

by rdgates

I work for a printer distributor, my primary function is to setup netwrok printers for clients. It sounds exactly like someone is sending a postscript job to the printer and there is no postscript option installed. Any job where the printer doesn't understand the commands will cause this "garbage", so it could be somebody has the wrong driver loaded, or one of their other local printers got set to the port that the problem printer is on.

Richard Gates

by choppit

It certainly sounds like the bugbear virus (or similar). Something is writing to your print shares. Have you looked at the permissions on the affected printers? This may yield some clue as to which workstations have access to create the spurious print jobs. Also, clear all your print queues/servers. If you can, shut down all systems and servers,re-scan for viruses in safe mode and flush queues. Once all systems have been checked switch back on.

This happened to me some time ago and even though
no active Bugbear infections were found, I tracked the problem back to a user who had clicked on an emailed attachment. Apparently their system (W98) then crashed coincidentally at the same time the printers started......................

This discussion is closed to new replies.