Some printers and print drivers are more prone to problems than other as manufacturers try to gain a competitive advantage by pushing the technology envelope.
As a rule, the print drivers that ship on the Microsoft Windows CD are more reliable than those that come with the printer. Thus, if you are having problems, look in you printer manual for information on which other printers your printer is compatible with. Then install the print driver(s) for those printers (My Computer - Printers - Add Printer). Print drivers for earlier models may be simpler, more thoroughly tested, and thus more reliable.
Try a driver from an earlier model of the same line of printers from the Windows CD. That will usually work.
Also, in order to avoid problems while printing, we advise that print spooling be disabled when printing from the Curriculum. With the spooler disabled, pages will print directly to the printer without first being cached on your hard disk by the Print Manager.
To disable spooling, click through the following sequences:
- My Computer
- Printers
- Highlight a printer
- From the Menu choose File - Properties
- In dialog box click Details tab
- Spool Settings...
- Click "Print directly to printer" (note: this may be grayed out if your printer is shared).
A more stable operating system such as Windows XP will be far less likely to exhibit spooler problems.
