Troubleshooting general printing problems in Windows XP (314085)

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Depending on your configuration, try one or more of the following procedures.

Test the parallel port driver and the hardware

If the printer is connected to an LPT port, see whether you can print from a command prompt.

• If the printer is not a PostScript printer, type dir > lpt1 at a command prompt, and then press ENTER. You may have to do this more than once to fill the print buffer on some printers. Page-oriented printers (for example, laser printers) generally do not start to print until a form feed PCL command is sent or until more information than just a page is present in the buffer. Running the dir > lpt1 command from the Windows directory will fill the page buffer.
• If the printer is a PostScript printer, printing from a command prompt does not work.
  
  For additional information about running a test for a PostScript printer, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

  64859 Testing the connection to a PostScript printer

• If you are using a plotter, visit the following Hewlett-Packard (HP) Web site for information:

  http://www.hp.com

If you can successfully print from a command prompt, the parallel port driver and the hardware are working correctly. This eliminates the Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and the driver as possible causes. If the output is printed to the printer from the dir command, the print driver or printer configuration is probably the source of the problem.

• See whether the printer cable meets the IEEE 1284 specification. If the cable does meet the specification, the cable itself is marked accordingly.
• Make sure that no devices other than the printer are connected to the port and that no scanners, switch boxes, and so on are between the computer and the printer.
• Perform a power-on self test (POST) on the printer. If you cannot perform a POST, you need to have the printer serviced or repaired.

Test the printer driver

To test the printer driver, see whether you can print from WordPad or Notepad.

If you can print from WordPad or Notepad, either the problem is related to the program that you are using, or Windows may not be running a particular printing command that the program requires. Refer to the "Check the Program" section of this article.

• If you are using a PostScript printer, load the Apple LaserWriter NT driver. This is a basic PostScript driver, and using this driver can show you whether the problem is related to the particular PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file for the printer.
• If the printer is not a PostScript printer, load the Generic/Text Only printer driver. This is a basic printer driver, and using this driver can show you whether the basic printing stack is working properly.
• If you are using a plotter, load the Hewlett-Packard HP-GL/2 plotter driver.

If the printer does not print when you use the basic drivers, refer to the "Check the Printing Stack" section of this article.

If the printer does print when you use the basic drivers, see the "Check the Program" section of this article.

Check the program

1. Print a different, simpler file. For example, create a new document that contains less information. This test determines whether the cause is the program or something in the document.
2. Check the available disk space on the system drive by seeing whether a small print job prints successfully.
3. See whether you can print from another operating system. If printing succeeds, the problem is related to the output file.

Check the printing stack

1. Remove and reinstall the printer driver.
   
   For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   135406 Steps to manually remove and reinstall a printer driver

   If you are using a service pack, reinstall the service pack after you reinstall the printers.
2. Check the available space on the hard disk. Print jobs may not print if there is not enough space to spool the print job.

For additional information about how to troubleshoot networking printing problems in Windows XP, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.

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