Tech problems

[Jeysie]

Warning: Nasty ranting ahead!

I hate, hate, HATE the stupid ^#%#*!! useless printer server queue thingy at my job. It keeps having this problem where it'll print one webpage just fine, but then any webpages after that won't spool. So then I have to restart the computer before I can print webpages again. On days where I have to do lots of web shipping stuff (which is two pages per shipment) or like today where I have to print 10+ pages of company profile pages, I have to either keep restarting until I'm either done or the &@*^&@!! server remembers how to spool more than one page like a normal server. It's so &*@^@&!! annoying!!

(froths at the mouth out of sheer irritation)

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Yonkey]

I hate, hate, HATE the stupid ^#%#*!! useless printer server queue thingy at my job. It keeps having this problem where it'll print one webpage just fine, but then any webpages after that won't spool.

Is the printer set to start printing after the first page is spooled, or the last page?  Have you tried disabling spooling altogether and printing immediately?

[Jeysie]

Is the printer set to start printing after the first page is spooled, or the last page?  Have you tried disabling spooling altogether and printing immediately?

The printer just prints as soon as a given page is spooled. It then spools the rest of the pages in the background while the first page is printing.

I could try figuring out how to disable spooling... but it's a network printer... I'm not sure how that would work, since all the computers spool to the same queue/printer, as it were.

I wish I could figure out why sometimes it works fine, and other times it gives me this headache.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Yonkey]

Ok, since it's a network printer, you probably can't disable spooling, but you can try setting it to start printing after last page is spooled instead of the first page.

The obvious solution is to upgrade the printer driver, but if it works sometimes and doesn't at others, it might be the specific programs you are printing from?  If they are all web sites, then maybe it has problems with rasterizing particular parts of a site (i.e. certain kinds of tables, backgrounds, images, etc).  

[Jeysie]

Hmm. Maybe. But it's sort of... basically, when I start up the computer, either it'll properly spool webpages when I try to, or it won't. If it works, it'll generally stay working unless I have to reboot. If it doesn't, I have to reboot it to print a webpage again.

Of course, I also have the only computer in the place stuck running IE5 on Win95, and I think my computer's the only one with the problem, so who knows?

I remember the time when I commented to one of my co-workers that "You know, these computer systems really should be standardized." She told me that their outsource IT company said the same thing. Too bad there's no budget for it.

I'll be seriously glad when I can end this assignment. There's several other things I'm not happy about other than damn outdated useless technology.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Yonkey]

I never even knew IE5 could run on Win95!

The reason it works on reboot is because the printer spooler program gets reinitialized.  I'm not sure if it runs as a task in Win95's task list or not, but if so you could try ending it and trying to print again.  It saves you from having to restart the computer at least.

My guess is that it's using a 16-bit driver instead of one designed for Win95.  Probably some sort of buffer overflow problem, but if you can manage to find the Win95 drivers for it, try installing them and see if it works.  If not, the above method should help, temporarily at least.  

[Jeysie]

Hmm. Thanks for the ideas. Finding a new driver might be tricky... there's no telling where in the heck the driver CD for the printer might be, so I'll have to look for it online. But it's a thought.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Jeysie]

Not that anyone cares at this point, but it turns out the stupid computer wasn't logging into the server correctly all the time. So they installed an upgrade to the login software. Of course, now the first thing I print after booting the computer fails to spool, but everything works after that.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[B'rrr]

lol, guess Daniel isn't the only one that revives old threads ; )

good to know that things are kinda working though  

[Jeysie]

lol, guess Daniel isn't the only one that revives old threads ; )

good to know that things are kinda working though  

Hee! I don't usually, but it occurred to me when I saw the split thread again that I never actually said things were fixed at the time!

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Yonkey]

  You should tell the tech people to force the computer to map/login to the printer when they boot up.  They're supposed to do that anyway.  

[Jeysie]

Dude, it's fixed now, honest.

(Well, as fixed as this POS gets, anyway.)

Peace & Luv, Liz