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Printing problems

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by zlitocook

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I have one user who responds to the CIO, CEO and other TLA's. She had a older Epson printer that put out a few extra pages with nothing on them. She thought that the printer was bad so she got a new Epson. A C86 and the problem became worse. Now a document would start on one sheet of paper and stop half way through, it will spit out four or five sheets of paper and compleat the document on another sheet. This is a XP pro system with a lot of disk space free and no other process's running. It has 512 mem. installed and I removed all other printers. It has SP1 and updates, this company will not let us install SP2 because of older apps. I used all MS and Epson trouble shooting tips with no help. I would reinstall but she has more hours then I do, so ether she has to take a day off or I have to come in on a weekend. And I do not get paid over time! I have uninstalled, deleted, removed registery items, kicked the CPU and just cussed the computer. But it did not help. I suggested to her that the next step was to back up her computer and to reimage it. She said that was fine as long as she could keep using it. I need a knock out dart and a strong drink before I return to her cube! Oh she has a 20 gig drive, with about 1.2 free and she wants me to make it bigger! With out adding anything to her computer!!! Do I need to shoot myself of just run away?

7 replies

by d_v ant

I have been stuck in the same situation as you with a user who doesn't have time for me to fix their problems. You didn't say if this was a usb printer or not. Have you reinstalled the drivers? If it is usb, did you reinstall the usb drivers? Is it a usb 2.0 printer and she only has usb 1.1? Have you tried a previous version of the driver?

If none of these solve the problems then you will need to reimage her machine. Try to get her a spare to use while you do it. If you can't get a spare, try to work out a deal with your boss to get a day off for coming in over the weekend.

As far as making the drive bigger, I'll leave it up to you to explain that you can't make something out of nothing.

by zlitocook

The printer is USB and I have compleatly uninstalled all drivers, folders and registry entrys that I could find. I think I will reimage a second computer, have her called away for an hour or so. Then sneak up and booby trap her chair, nono I mean do the file and transfer. And make sure every thing works. Then replace her computer. But I would still like to know why the printer is doing that.

by sgt_shultz

With your sense of humor, you will do just fine. bring her a strong drink and both of you have one, together. (tease) you have great opportunity to develop relationship with woman who can make case for you with management later...do not blow smoke. if you are bewildered, say so. if you have never see this problem before, say so. if you are determined to find out what it is: say so. do not bs...
I think you are right: you need to know why it's doing this. i think the printer is bad. or the driver. i supposed could be the usb cable but i am not sure how...but i sense i would get a fight over the driver after all the sleuthing you've done. I would have really liked it if you had posted the exact printer driver in use and exactly how the problem is reproduced. Eg. does Word (and what sp is office?) do it and not Notepad? or any printing?
can you get you hands on any other printer to take to her and demostrate the problem goes away with a new printer. can you take her epson (sneak it while she is in a meeting with a TLA whatever that is)and put it on your pc and see if the problem follows the 'older' epson. you did not mention attempting cleaning the epson.
Updates and troubleshooting take time. it is you not your bosses that think any fix you use must not be disruptive. The low hard disk space is a problem waiting to happen and she might come all the way down over it. that would not be how i would prefer to handle it. you could slap in second drive prtty fast, on a lunch hour. partition it and start moving data there maybe or for sure the windows update folders and the swap file. you could have here switch over to new disk after few days of one hour foray's into her computer.
this is your chance to hang in there with a difficult problem.
bet when you get done with this one you will have same rule of thumb as me: whenever you get weird intractable problem, think hardware.
who is in charge of investigating why sp2 won't work? maybe you can pick up the ball there...

by zlitocook

Guess what? I put my printer on her desk and it works great, it is an old HP deskjet 1100. She is happy, I am happy and the sun shines down on me. But I still have to move her to a larger hard drive and a new image:( I am plunged into darkness. Oh well SSDD heh.

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