Slow Printing help please.

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Hi all, my Old Boy is having some troubles with his printer and I hope someone here can help a little.

He has a cheapo HP all-in-one which up until now has been good as gold for him. Recently, it has taken ages between sending a print job and the job actually to start printing.

I've gone through a few possible fixes with him to no avail:

1. It's definitely not application specific, and it happens with simple text as much as pictures.
2. I uninstalled/reinstalled the printer/software.
3. I disabled the spooler but it still happened making me think there was a bottle neck in the data throughput so:
4. I got him to uninstall/reinstall his USB controller.

It is still happening.

As it's an all-in-one I've asked him to try copying a document without involving the PC at all but I'm still waiting for the results on that. Other than a knackered printer, does anyone have a clue as to what's causing this?

Cheers,

Baba.

 

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you've not told us your OS or any other details, but have you tried disabling all other loaded programs and trying again ? i.e. using MSConfig for XP for example. Also have you checked for spyware?

Has any other s/w been recently upgraded ?

details details, we need details...

 

No spyware. Scanned with Adaware, Spybot, etc.

I've not tried disabling options in msconfig as I'm doing this over the phone and my Dad is a bit difficult to explain things to.

I did the other stuff using remote assistance but restarting the PC everytime I change msconfig is a bit time consuming and I'd rather wait until I'm in front of the PC.

OS is Windows XP Home.

Cheers.

Baba.

 

go in via remote config, remove every bloody thing using msconfig, do a reboot - if it works, you know where to look, if it fails, restore everything and look elsewhere. Its not too bad

 

Yes, and then I've got to reboot with each option selected one at a time to see where the problem lies. I would hardly call turning everything off narrowing it down. He's just tried it with printing directly from the scanner unit and it's fine but I would hardly call it a success that I've narowed it down to a problem with the PC.

 

suit yourself! disabling all at once tells you straight away whether its a software conflict or not. If its not you can look elsewhere. If it is, then yes, to sort it will need multiple reboots. But at least you'd know where to start. I can't think of a better next step

 

Alright. The thing is though, turning everything of would disable the printer anyway...

 

Fair point here, Baba - troubleshooting is often a frustrating situation, but you've been given some advice to try by someone offering help. Try and take it gracefully mate, even if it's not maybe what you want to hear or doesn't fix the problem straight away.

Thanks

 

er, why ?

msconfig removes startup programs, not drivers.

 

thinking of 98, leave services alone...

 

OK, I'll give it a try.

 

thats the spirit, now take 2 aspirin in the morning and see me if the symptoms persist

 

Sorry if my posts seem short. It's been a l - o - n -g day. I appreciate the help. Will let you know how I get on.

Cheers Clyde.

 

no worries... enjoy the evening!

 

What's left of it! I'm abandoning my father's printer for the moment. I'll pick it up tomorrow when no doubt he'll have another load of problems he wants me to fix...

"How do delete a file?"
"How do I rename something?"
"How do I set up a screen saver?"

You wouldn't believe he's got a diploma in Computer Science !

 

Nice one Guys - well-played ! Thanks

 

consider it work experience *G*

 

Personally I think these all in one printer scanner copier multifunction machines are a pain in the bum. The software that comes with the HP offering is humongous, way over bloated. It rendered my Father-In-Laws P3 700 laptop virtually unusable. It took over an hour just to install the software

I agree with Clyde that there is probably another application wanting a small piece of the available resources and it was the last straw for the poor PC

My advice to people considering buying a multi functional machine is don't. Just buy a printer and only load the drivers not all the other bundled junk. I am speaking as a person that was service manager of an office equipment company suppling these type of things for 14 years.

 

Baba, Bluerinse just beat me to it. The HP stuff that comes with the machines these days is terrible stuff. Try looking on the installation cd for the relevant drivers and just installing them. Make sure you uninstall the bloatware first though.

If you don't find the drivers on the cd (usually well tucked away) then there is always the HP support site to download them from.

 

I dunno, I've got a multifunction HP and its brilliant. Then again I don't run all the memory resident crap HP try to load..

I like my HP though.. beats the hell out of my old epson..