Printing with Windows XP:
          Hard Copy Made Easier

from http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/crawford/hardcopy.asp

	Related Links   Got more questions? Discuss this topic in the Windows XP Printing and Fax Newsgroup Focus On: Printers and Windows XP An Introduction to Professional Photo Printers Driver Guide WinDrivers Steve's Digicams: Photo Printers ZDNet Editor's Top Printers PC World Top 10 Laser Printers Printer Showcase Color Laser Printers Laser Printer Reviews Troubleshooting General Printing Problems in Windows XP Windows XP Printing How-to Articles Previous Columns by Sharon Crawford

By Sharon Crawford

Printers were a black hole in the early days of the PC. The only thing harder to set up was a modem. Programs and printers existed in their own separate worlds. Every application required a different driver (device-specific control program) for every printer.

The advent of Microsoft Windows brought a welcome end to that nonsense. Every printer still requires a driver, but all Windows programs use the same one. For the most part, all you have to do is figure out which printer to buy, because when you connect it to your Windows XP-based computer, it just works.

In this column, I'll cover how to select a printer to use with your Windows XP-based computer and provide some troubleshooting tips for those of you who are using older printers. To find where to go for the right hardware and for solutions to printing problems, check out Focus On: Printers and Windows XP.

Choose an Inkjet or Laser Printer?

Here are the important questions to ask when shopping for a printer:

• What kind of printing am I going to be doing and how much?
• How long am I prepared to wait for a page?
• How much am I willing to pay per page?

There are trade-offs of course. As the maxim goes, you can have it good, fast, or cheap. Pick two.

If you want to print color photos, an inkjet printer is the obvious (and relatively inexpensive) choice. Inkjet printers use tiny drops of ink to form letters, graphics, and photos. Some printers have one cartridge that holds the cyan (greenish-blue), magenta, and yellow inks, and a second cartridge for the black ink. Look for a printer with individual cartridges for each color—they're cheaper to replace and reduce waste. For photos, many inkjets also have additional cartridges that contain lighter shades of cyan and magenta inks. Most inkjets print at three to nine pages per minute (ppm) for text, but are much slower for color photographs, taking two to 18 minutes to print a single picture.

Inkjets generally cost a lot less than laser printers. Looking at Canon printers, the Canon i850 or i860 sell for $150-$170. Both use four ink cartridges that are also a bargain to replace at about $12 each. The Canons are also among the fastest of the inkjets, turning out up to 22 black and white text pages per minute. For a look at what's available, see ZDNet Editors' Top Printers.

Laser printers create images by transferring toner (powdered ink) to paper that then passes over an electrically charged drum. Laser printers produce sharp black-and-white text and graphics. Laser printers are usually faster than inkjets, producing text pages at a rate of nine to 15 ppm, and are cheaper to operate. A very good laser printer can be had for under $250, including the Brother 1440 and the Hewlett Packard 1000. Toner cartridges for these models cost under $100 and produce thousands of pages at a cost of about 2-3 cents each. For more information about laser printers, see the HP Laser Printing Buying Basics article.

Color laser printers are more expensive than black-and-white laser printers and much more expensive than inkjets, but there are some bargains. Color laser printers have long been the province of high-end graphics studios because the best ones started at $2500 and went up, way up. However, today it's possible to buy a color laser printer at a reasonable price. Both Hewlett Packard and Minolta make color lasers for about $700-$800. For reviews of laser printers, check these sites: PC World Top 10 Laser Printers, Printer Showcase Color Laser Printers, and Laser Printer Reviews.

Measure Speed and Resolution

The ads for printers describe print speeds well in excess of any you're likely to attain at home. That's because speed depends on what you're printing and at what quality. Comparing brands is difficult because each printer manufacturer has its own method of calculating the pages per minute. If you do a lot of printing, speed counts. Inkjets vary widely in the time they take to print a color photo. The amount of time it takes to print a color photo may not be in direct proportion to the quality of the end product either. See An Introduction to Professional Photo Printers for an overview of the merits of each type of photo printer. Check Steve's Digicams: Photo Printers for reviews and manufacturer's links to photo printers.

A printer's resolution is another place where it's difficult to get facts. DPI refers to the number of dots of ink a printer places on the paper. So you'd think that the more dots, the finer quality the image. However, quality is affected by other factors such as dot shape, size, and placement so that even printers that report identical DPI counts can have very different-looking outputs.

Note: Printers can look identical and so can their ink cartridges, but be sure you can buy cartridges as a commodity item from office supply stores. If you are forced to buy cartridges from the manufacturer, you'll pay more.

Troubleshooting Tips for Older Printers

If your printer doesn't work properly or your computer doesn't recognize it after you upgrade to Windows XP, you may need a new printer driver. In general, if the printer manufacturer has not produced Windows XP drivers for your printer, it's time to think about getting a newer printer. Prices have come way down, speed and quality have gone way up, and Plug and Play support in Windows XP means you can just plug in new hardware and start working.

However, you can sometimes get older drivers to work, although you should still think about ditching that old printer. Here are some troubleshooting tips to try if your printer won't go after you upgrade to Windows XP. First, make sure you are logged on as an administrator. Installing hardware and software requires administrative rights.

The best place to start is Windows Update. Click Scan for updates in the left-hand column, and then click Driver Updates. Download and install any new drivers for your printer.

If you're still having printing problems, go to the printer manufacturer's Web site and search for a Windows XP printer driver for your printer and install it. If that doesn't fix your problem, check that the print spooler is working properly by following these steps:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Expand Services and Applications in the console tree, and then click Services.
3. In the details pane, scroll to Print Spooler and double-click. The Print Spooler Properties dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Make sure the Startup type is set at Automatic and the service status is set at Started. Make changes if necessary.

If your printer still won't print successfully, it can help to uninstall and reinstall the printer drivers. Uninstall the driver by following these steps:

1. Turn the printer off and disconnect it from the computer.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and click Add or Remove Programs, and then remove any printer software listed.
3. In Control Panel, click Printers and Other Hardware, and then click Printers and Faxes.
4. Right-click the printer, and then click Delete.
5. While Printers and Faxes is still open, on the File menu, click Server Properties.
6. On the Drivers tab, remove all the drivers listed, and restart the computer.

Now you're ready to go to the printer manufacturer's Web site and download and install the latest Windows XP drivers. If your printer came with Windows XP drivers on a CD, install them according to the manufacturer's instructions. Then connect the printer when instructed by the software.

If the manufacturer has Windows XP drivers for some printers but not for yours, try drivers for a similar model. If the manufacturer has no Windows XP-specific drivers, try the drivers for Windows 2000. Windows 98 drivers will definitely not work. Check these two sites for help finding a printer driver: Driver Guide and WinDrivers.

Other Printing Glitches

Not all printing problems are about incompatible drivers. Some are related to applications, some are caused by hardware, and some are just plain mysterious. Nevertheless, it's usually possible to get your printer back in action.

You may have run into the vanishing printer problem: you're blithely working along in your usual fashion when you suddenly discover that your printer has vanished. No, not the machine—it sits there as it always has, turned on, connected, but refusing to do anything. When you open Printers and Faxes in Control Panel, the icon is nowhere to be found. The culprit is probably the printer spooler mentioned earlier. To start the Print Spooler service, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. Type net start spooler and then press ENTER.

If the printer vanishes again, follow the procedure for viewing and setting the Print Spooler service described earlier.

Another problem can occur when printing a page in Internet Explorer. You might get a message saying that "an error has occurred in the script on this page." This happens whether you print from the Internet Explorer File menu or the Printer icon in the toolbar. To fix this problem, open Internet Explorer and follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
2. On the Advanced tab, scroll to Settings, and clear the Enable third-party browser extensions check box.
3. Click OK, close Internet Explorer, and restart your computer.

Figure 2

Now you should be able to print Web pages without a problem. Bear in mind that when this option is disabled, you won't be able to use Internet Explorer add-ons like the Yahoo Companion or Google Toolbar. For other issues with printing in Internet Explorer, see the Microsoft Insider page, Internet Explorer Printing Issues.

Printers are usually among the easiest peripheral devices to install and use. If your printer turns out not to be one of the easy ones, check Troubleshooting General Printing Problems in Windows XP and Windows XP Printing How-to Articles for help. For peer-to-peer support, participate in the Windows XP Printing and Fax Newsgroup.

Sharon Crawford is a former editor now engaged in writing books and magazine articles. Since 1993, she has written or co–written two dozen books on computer topics. Her books include Windows 2000 Pro: The Missing Manual, Windows 98: No Experience Required, and Windows 2000 Professional for Dummies (with Andy Rathbone).