Users in your department print to a laser printer that is connected to your computer via a parallel port. The laser printer is shared on your Windows NT Workstation and is used by Windows NT Workstation and Windows 95 clients. Both types of users noticed today that their print jobs are coming out garbled.
Required result
Ensure the printer issue is not related to network communications.
Optional desired results
Ensure the printer issue is not a spooler issue on your Windows NT Workstation.
Ensure the printer issue is not a driver issue.
Proposed solution
Remove sharing on the printer and try to print from your local workstation.
Share the printer again and then stop and start the printer spooler under Control Panel | Services | Spooler.
Check to ensure there is an appropriate amount of free hard drive space on your Windows NT Workstation for the spool file.
Test the printing from the department workstations.
By removing sharing and printing locally from your workstation, you can ensure the issue is not networking related. Network errors may cause gibberish on pages if the packets are not received properly by your Windows NT Workstation. This satisfies the required result. The spool file for networked printers is stored under %systemroot%\System32\Spool\Printers. You need to ensure there is enough space on the partition that stores the spool file to handle print jobs. You need twice the size of the largest anticipated print job in free hard drive space. This satisfies the first optional desired result. You did not address the driver issue. Corrupted drivers can cause garbled print jobs. You check the drivers by uninstalling them and then reinstalling them. This does not satisfy the second optional desired result.
The proposed solution does not meet the required result.