Fun with the Psychotic Printer

[kellinator]

My printer is going batshit again.

Note the "again." As in, this is a regular occurrence. It wouldn't even merit mention if it weren't getting on my nerves so much.

See, I'm one of the very few employees here at the Library of the Damned to have a deskjet printer at my desk instead of just printing everything to the laser printer as most of my co-workers do. The things I do require a lot of printing, and I appreciate the allowance. The only problem is, as I previously stated, the printer is batshit. Every so often, because there's not enough paper or there's too much paper or the paper wasn't loaded just right or Mercury is retrograde or I looked at it funny, the printer refuses to listen to reason and instead starts spitting out pages upon pages of gobbledygook. It can't be stopped. It just keeps going, while I sit there helplessly feeling sorry for all the innocent trees murdered so my printer can have a mechanical hissy-fit. I tried unplugging it for almost twenty-four hours, and it still started up right where I stopped it. The only reason I haven't gone medieval on it is because if left to its own devices, it will eventually scream itself out, like a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum, and go back to normal. Well, that and the fact that me going after it with a baseball bat would probably not mesh with my attempts to have a professional demeanor.

Comments

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Back in the day, this was usually a result of the wrong kind of document (postscript, etc.) being sent to a printer that couldn't handle it.

But as to the restarting again, have you looked at deleting the job from the connected PC or server? Dinky ink jet printers are mostly controlled by the PC, and it is probably the one trying again and again until it is successful...

And if you don't know what kind of jobs cause it, looking at the queue might give you an idea.

SKG

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

I usually go in and try to delete whatever's screwing it up from the print queue, but it doesn't always work for some reason. :( Thanks for the advice, though.