A few of you may remember a thread I started a month or so about a display problem I was having regarding an older laptop of mine. Well, it’s developed another charming quirk that I’m having trouble with.
The computer is a Compaq Presario laptop running Windows 98. I have a Lexmark X73 printer attached via USB cable. Whenever I try to print a job, it feeds the paper in, then I get an error message saying “Printer is off-line” followed by “Problem communicating with the printer.” It works perfectly when attached to my other laptop (Compaq Presario, several years newer, running Win ME).
I went through the Lexmark site technical support, which said that there is a bug in Win 98 SE that prevents some USB devices from working correctly. I downloaded and installed the fix from Microsoft, but it didn’t have any effect.
Next, I emailed a Lexmark tech support staffmember, who suggested that it might be a software conflict, and had me disable the startup group, which also had no effect.
I’ve played around with the spool settings, deleted and reinstalled the drivers, and even formatted the computer and reinstalled Windows. All of these did the same thing - jack shit.
Any suggestions or helpful hints would be greatly appreciated. I would have done this earlier, but was a bit reluctant to post another computer question, but since I got such well thought-out, prompt responses last time it seemed worth it.
Thanks in advance,
Kody