Oh, all these high tech machines, sheesh

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-27-2000
Oh, all these high tech machines, sheesh
3
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 4:27am
This computer is clearly being bogged down by SOMETHING, it usually does not run this slow and certainly it's a new thing that whenever I "send" an e-mail from my default e-mail, I get a quick flash of the box that tells McAfee is scanning every e-mail I'm sending - it's only MY e-mail, not DH's. It also is still taking a full 30 seconds or so for my e-mail to try to download from the server, even if there's no incoming mail there! I ran McAfee this morning again and it still says there's nothing there of concern, our resources are not low, I've checked out so many things and just can't find anything wrong that would be slowing it down like this. I have things set up to run stuff like de-frag, etc. on a regularly-scheduled basis, so I feel like I'm doing a lot of things right.

Anyhow, on top of that I'm finally ready to ditch this stupid HP printer, it's an HP desk jet 952c. When it's working, it's just fine, prints well enough for our purposes. Right now it won't do squat - it has refused to even recognize an order to print for 2 days, it does this from time to time, and probably in another couple of days out of the blue it'll print again. The other problem that has driven us nuts with this printer is how it goes beserk from time to time and just spits out page after page after page of either totally blank paper, OR even worse when it prints a single line of nonsense along the top of every page. We've learned to just keep feeding it the same 20 pieces of paper until it quits, but sometimes we're talking about 200-300 pages total, you think it will never stop. We've never been able to figure that out, but I've read it's some quirk in HP's printers. It will NOT allow you to cancel the last print job in the que, tried that many times, nothing happens.

Any recommendations for a new printer? I know our options are a better, more expensive one, but do you still have to spring $38 per cartridge for ink for those? But I read unless you need a pricey printer, don't go that route, pick up an inexpensive one, but I know all about how we pay $550 per gallon for ink in the cartridges, too, so that's not "inexpensive" in my mind. What are the options??? I'd rather hear it from you folks instead of doing more research that sounds confusing. Any particular brands and models you all are happy with?



 


~~joannaran~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2003
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 9:38am
This is probably a problem created by your printer. Whats happening old data is stuck in your "spooler" directory. This is a place that temporarily holds files that are in the process of being printed. The key word here is "temporary". These files are then supposed to be automatically disposed of by the printer software. Evidently in this case such is not happening. This will explain why you get a page with gibberish or one line printed on and then a bunch of blank paper. Since its alot of blank paper 200-300 sheets, then its a large corrupted file. This file is trying to utilize your hard drive to print nothing while the computer wants to also access the hard drive for its activities, hence the performance issue.

The FIX.

1.Physically disconnect all the cables between the printer and the PC including power.

2.Uninstall the printer from the PC, you can do this by using the software disc that came with the printer or use add/remove programs, and or add/remove hardware.

3.Power off the PC

4.Plug in the printer and reconnect all of its cables.

5.Power up the PC

6.Reinstall the printer software.

this should solve your printer and performance issues.

I can't help you with the price of toner its simply industry price gouging.

Ed

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-24-2004
Fri, 09-24-2004 - 12:44am
Hi,

if your computer is running slow could it be trying to do too many things? Press controll alt delete (but only one time; 2x wil restart your computer). I think whatever you see on this cute little new menu is what´s running on your computer at the moment(also when you press controll alt delete everything freezes).Before you press "end task" on any highlighted item be sure you know what it is ( sometimes I don´t, and wow! do I make myself problems). Hope this helps

Avatar for cl_emty_nstr
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Fri, 09-24-2004 - 2:23pm

I can't remember do you have XP?


When I had Norton 2002 when I would click on Send from OE a box would pop up as the message was being scanned if it had a picture or something besides plain text it could take a couple seconds. Plain text it would pop up so fast then be gone because there was only plain text to scan. But now with Norton 2004 a little box, pops up under everything down above my clock that I never saw untill I hit send and then closed OE almost at the same time. So the new version still did the pop up scanning but because it was behind the open OE I never saw it. lol...... I noticed too that now with the Norton, Zone Alarm, and my ISP now scans my mail that it comes in slower than it used to. Before it could just run through the open doors now it has to open each door and it just takes longer.


If you run all your maintenance to get rid of all the old stuff. Run Adaware, Spybot, and your McAfee make sure you have all the old


 


Have a nice day !.