I’ve tried allsorts to get to the bottom of this intermittent printer problem, but still no luck, can anybody help?!
I have an hp deskjet 720C (parallel port) connected to a W98SE PC. Has been working fine for ages. Recently got “Can’t communicate with printer” errors, and no print or partial print coming out. I’ve tried a new printer cable – no luck. The printer works fine on another PC. I tried a different printer on the problem PC – sometimes works, sometimes not. Tried reinstalling the LPT driver files (vcomm.vxd, lpt.vxd). Tried running the dos tool from the W98 CD to check the parallel port – no errors detected.
Thinking that the port was the problem, got a USB-to-parallel cable (assigned to LPT2) to run the printer from. Worked ok at first, but now doesn’t.
Throughout all of this troubleshooting, I’ve had the printer suddenly print ok and do so for days before failing again.
Am I looking at a hardware failure in the parallel port or the motherboard, or can anyone suggest another line of attack?
Any help appreciated!
