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I posted last week about an HP 820cse (parallel) that printed very
jittery and added color on a b/w documents - adding to the fuzziness. The
printing is poor in MS-Word and Adobe Acrobat. The problems only occur on
ONE XP Pro machine. This is what makes me scratch my head:

The printer works fine on a different XP pro machine.
The printer works fine on a 98se machine.
The self-tests within windows are perfect.
The self-tests from the printer alone are perfect.


I have reinstalled the drivers from two different xp disks and copied the
drivers from a different (working) xp machine.

I did a repair install of XP. (Though did not delete).
I did a repair install of MS-Word.

I ran spyware, antivirus software from Ad-aware, spybot S&D, spyware
doctor, and bazooka. Ran repair utilities reg-mechanic, reg-repair, and
tweaknow reg-cleaner. Ran tests with MS-anti-spyware and Avast!
Uninstalled all spyware, firewalls and anti-virus software except that
from MS. Still bad printing.

Tried "standard print" option for the port in the bios.

As an extra "gremlin" that might be related, (or not), the printer driver
for net2phone doesn't work either.

Anything that you can think up that might still be screwing up the
printing on ONLY ONE machine?

Did you use the same paralell cable on the other machine or a different one?
A bad paralell cable can reach in and do some very strange things.

Hank

"pgluth1" <> wrote in message
news:Xns974A9F9FBE41Dpgluth1@208.49.80.60...
>I posted last week about an HP 820cse (parallel) that printed very
> jittery and added color on a b/w documents - adding to the fuzziness. The
> printing is poor in MS-Word and Adobe Acrobat. The problems only occur on
> ONE XP Pro machine. This is what makes me scratch my head:
>
> The printer works fine on a different XP pro machine.
> The printer works fine on a 98se machine.
> The self-tests within windows are perfect.
> The self-tests from the printer alone are perfect.
>
>
> I have reinstalled the drivers from two different xp disks and copied the
> drivers from a different (working) xp machine.
>
> I did a repair install of XP. (Though did not delete).
> I did a repair install of MS-Word.
>
> I ran spyware, antivirus software from Ad-aware, spybot S&D, spyware
> doctor, and bazooka. Ran repair utilities reg-mechanic, reg-repair, and
> tweaknow reg-cleaner. Ran tests with MS-anti-spyware and Avast!
> Uninstalled all spyware, firewalls and anti-virus software except that
> from MS. Still bad printing.
>
> Tried "standard print" option for the port in the bios.
>
> As an extra "gremlin" that might be related, (or not), the printer driver
> for net2phone doesn't work either.
>
> Anything that you can think up that might still be screwing up the
> printing on ONLY ONE machine?
>

And is that 820 only capable of printing parallel or will it also do USB?
Try USB, if possible.

smackedass

pgluth1 wrote:
> I posted last week about an HP 820cse (parallel) that printed very
> jittery and added color on a b/w documents - adding to the fuzziness. The
> printing is poor in MS-Word and Adobe Acrobat. The problems only occur on
> ONE XP Pro machine. This is what makes me scratch my head:
>
> The printer works fine on a different XP pro machine.
> The printer works fine on a 98se machine.
> The self-tests within windows are perfect.
> The self-tests from the printer alone are perfect.
>
>
> I have reinstalled the drivers from two different xp disks and copied the
> drivers from a different (working) xp machine.
>
> I did a repair install of XP. (Though did not delete).
> I did a repair install of MS-Word.
>
> I ran spyware, antivirus software from Ad-aware, spybot S&D, spyware
> doctor, and bazooka. Ran repair utilities reg-mechanic, reg-repair, and
> tweaknow reg-cleaner. Ran tests with MS-anti-spyware and Avast!
> Uninstalled all spyware, firewalls and anti-virus software except that
> from MS. Still bad printing.
>
> Tried "standard print" option for the port in the bios.
>
> As an extra "gremlin" that might be related, (or not), the printer driver
> for net2phone doesn't work either.
>
> Anything that you can think up that might still be screwing up the
> printing on ONLY ONE machine?
>


if the printer will print plain text, try printing directly from a DOS
window:

C:\>copy con: lpt1: [Enter]
Type in some stuff
With carriage returns if you like
^M^J^L^Z [Enter]

(That's [CTRL-M] [CTRL-J] [CTRL-L] [CTRL-Z])

See if you get straight text as expected.

You might also try downloading a printer diagnostic utility that will
print specific text for you to check - can't recommend any as I haven't
done that for years.

As someone said - check cable.

You might have a rootkit that has messed with the print spooler service
- try rootkit revealer from sysinternals (free download).

One semi-drastic way to rule out a hardware issue would be to install
Windows XP on a 'spare' hard disk and see whether a 'virgin' copy works OK.

One final thought (untested) would be to boot from a Knoppix CD and see
what print output you can get, but you'd need to check whether there is
native or close/compatible support for your printer.