Freakin $#^&*@# G*ddam Print jobs!

  • Thread starter Thread starter rci
  • Start date Start date
R

rci

DAMMIT BILL...

Why the H*ll can't you freaking design a windows operating system that will
ACTUALLY CANCEL A FRIGGIN PRINT JOB?

Sure, we open the printer... Sure, we see the job we freaking want to stop
sending... sure we click on it. Sure ser select CANCEL the FRIGGIN print
job... Sure we try "DELETE" the print job... Sure, it SAYS it's deleting
the job....

BUT IT NEVER DOES! EVER! we have to liteterally pull the freaking plug out
of the freaking wall to get your freaking operating system to FORGET about
the g*ddam print job, and to FINALLY STOP PRINTING IT!

YES, we cycle power on the printer... YES we try "net stop/start spooler"
yes, we try hitting the g*ddam thing with a baseball bat...

This has been going on for version after version of Windows... from 98 on.
At work, at home, my friends, my enemies.

Sort this SH*T out!


DAMMIT.

(sorry. I feel better now)
 
Let's have just a little more info...

What make and model of printer?
How is it connected to the PC... USB/LPT/Wireless/IR?
Local or Network printer?

Is it an Administrator or User that is cancelling the print job?

From which application are you printing... and what size is the file?
 
Stopping a print job is a function of the printer driver, so blame the
printer manufacturer for distributing a faulty set of drivers.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Hey Rick...

well that's the problem right there then isn't it!

Bill has made the mistake of having the drivers doing a job that the
OS should be doing...

Of the many dozens of printers I have used, NONE, regardless of
manufacturer, has EVER done a clean job of stopping a print job. HP, epson,
roland... you name it.

If the OS is not in charge of stopping bits from going to a printer driver,
then it should be, and that is the problem.




: Stopping a print job is a function of the printer driver, so blame the
: printer manufacturer for distributing a faulty set of drivers.

: --
: Best of Luck,

: Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
:
: Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone
:
: Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

: :>
:> DAMMIT BILL...
:>
:> Why the H*ll can't you freaking design a windows operating system that
:> will
:> ACTUALLY CANCEL A FRIGGIN PRINT JOB?
:>
:> Sure, we open the printer... Sure, we see the job we freaking want to stop
:> sending... sure we click on it. Sure ser select CANCEL the FRIGGIN print
:> job... Sure we try "DELETE" the print job... Sure, it SAYS it's deleting
:> the job....
:>
:> BUT IT NEVER DOES! EVER! we have to liteterally pull the freaking plug
:> out
:> of the freaking wall to get your freaking operating system to FORGET about
:> the g*ddam print job, and to FINALLY STOP PRINTING IT!
:>
:> YES, we cycle power on the printer... YES we try "net stop/start spooler"
:> yes, we try hitting the g*ddam thing with a baseball bat...
:>
:> This has been going on for version after version of Windows... from 98 on.
:> At work, at home, my friends, my enemies.
:>
:> Sort this SH*T out!
:>
:>
:> DAMMIT.
:>
:> (sorry. I feel better now)
:>
 
Hi Cari...

your question is to simplistic (or should I say, assumes too much) all makes
and models of printers... the latest IBM color laser. Xerox. HP. Roland,
etc. etc.

Connected directly. Shared. Networked.

Using the print spooler, printing around the spooler.

Win 2000, NT, XP...

User or Admin... all applications,

At work.

At home.

At my old job (*at* Hewlett Packard!)

At my new job.

Everywhere, all the time, all circumstances.

I'm not at all sure how to answer your question.

Today's outburst was due to an HP Deskjet 952C on a WinXP system, Admin,
directly connected to the system. No network. Internet Explorer was the
app.






: Let's have just a little more info...

: What make and model of printer?
: How is it connected to the PC... USB/LPT/Wireless/IR?
: Local or Network printer?

: Is it an Administrator or User that is cancelling the print job?

: From which application are you printing... and what size is the file?
: --
: Cari (MS-MVP Windows Client - Printing, Imaging & Hardware)
: www.coribright.com


: :>
:> DAMMIT BILL...
:>
:> Why the H*ll can't you freaking design a windows operating system that
:> will
:> ACTUALLY CANCEL A FRIGGIN PRINT JOB?
:>
:> Sure, we open the printer... Sure, we see the job we freaking want to stop
:> sending... sure we click on it. Sure ser select CANCEL the FRIGGIN print
:> job... Sure we try "DELETE" the print job... Sure, it SAYS it's deleting
:> the job....
:>
:> BUT IT NEVER DOES! EVER! we have to liteterally pull the freaking plug
:> out
:> of the freaking wall to get your freaking operating system to FORGET about
:> the g*ddam print job, and to FINALLY STOP PRINTING IT!
:>
:> YES, we cycle power on the printer... YES we try "net stop/start spooler"
:> yes, we try hitting the g*ddam thing with a baseball bat...
:>
:> This has been going on for version after version of Windows... from 98 on.
:> At work, at home, my friends, my enemies.
:>
:> Sort this SH*T out!
:>
:>
:> DAMMIT.
:>
:> (sorry. I feel better now)
:>
:>
 
Salut/Hi rci,

le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 06:40:01 GMT, tu disais/you said:-
Bill has made the mistake of having the drivers doing a job that the
OS should be doing...
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.

I go back to the Dos days. I remember the nightmare of having to tweak
printer drivers for every bloody program that I wanted to install. They
would come with 200 drivers, and you had to look to see if yours was
mentioned. No, it was more recent than the application. Same for sound
drivers, same for gfx cards. EVERY single application either had to have a
driver, or would have to work in some basic text mode.

As far as I'm concerned, Win 3.1 (which was my first toe in the GUI water)
was a royal PITA, (buggy, slower, clumsy etc) with the one glorious
exception of centralised drivers. Your hardware manufacturer provided a
driver for windows and all applications could drive the hardware. It was a
brilliant step forward.
Of the many dozens of printers I have used, NONE, regardless of
manufacturer, has EVER done a clean job of stopping a print job. HP, epson,
roland... you name it.
Click to expand...

I can't say I've had your experience. I frequently print from Word Perfect,
it's my wordprocessor of choice. I agree that _sometimes_ it's too late to
try to kill something in the print queue, but very often it isn't. I've
always believed this was linked to the relative sizes of the job, the spool
buffer and the internal printer buffer. If you think about it:- with a 25k
print job, going into a 10k buffer, the printer will be reading along the
buffer and if you issue a cancel instruction, this either has to be
prioritized in some way, (toggling one of the LPT port lines can do it,
iirc, but NOT if you are connecting via USB) or you have to wait until the
printer gets to it. I don't know exactly how a cancel printing instruction
is implemented, but my experience is that if it isn't acted upon, it's not
down to any version of Windows I've used, but is more likely to be a
driver/printer "feature".
If the OS is not in charge of stopping bits from going to a printer driver,
then it should be, and that is the problem.
Click to expand...

It is in charge up to the spool buffer and should clear that (and does so
perfectly well in my experience), but god forbid that it should meddle
further down the line.
 
I suspect also that as most printers now-a-days also have a relatively large
internal memory buffer, it has to empty also as presumably the "abort"
sequence is last-in/last-out in the queue of "data".
 
So what! Any reasonable printer control scheme has a "flush the buffer"
function, or a reset the printer function that will do the same thing. Now,
on the other hand, if the printer is a "page printer" as many laser printers
are, data sent to the printer and present on the drum ia not gonna be
flushed, the page or partial page will be printed. It's back to the printer
Mfr in otherwords.
 
I'm not saying the OS should be doing the driver function. I'm saying that
cutting bits off of flowing INTO the driver should be the OS function. To
hell with what the driver wants to do... if the OS doesn't want to send
bits, then the OS should stop sending bits.

And maybe that is the problem... that the os DOES stop sending bits, but the
driver sits there forever waiting for the EOF and won't reset to take a new
job.

In that case, the answer, once again, the OS is the solution. Kill the driver. Restart the
driver.

The OS has to take charge of the final say to this question: Print, or no
print. Not the driver. If print, then the driver handles the
details. But not aborting the job...

When you think about it, that's what is happening when you power off a
system to get the system to forget a print job. It's really an OS reset. And it
works.

Therefore, the OS *can* handle this. But it should do it without
requiring the OS to shut down.



: Salut/Hi rci,

: le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 06:40:01 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

:>
:>Bill has made the mistake of having the drivers doing a job that the
:>OS should be doing...

: I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.

: I go back to the Dos days. I remember the nightmare of having to tweak
: printer drivers for every bloody program that I wanted to install. They
: would come with 200 drivers, and you had to look to see if yours was
: mentioned. No, it was more recent than the application. Same for sound
: drivers, same for gfx cards. EVERY single application either had to have a
: driver, or would have to work in some basic text mode.

: As far as I'm concerned, Win 3.1 (which was my first toe in the GUI water)
: was a royal PITA, (buggy, slower, clumsy etc) with the one glorious
: exception of centralised drivers. Your hardware manufacturer provided a
: driver for windows and all applications could drive the hardware. It was a
: brilliant step forward.

:>Of the many dozens of printers I have used, NONE, regardless of
:>manufacturer, has EVER done a clean job of stopping a print job. HP, epson,
:>roland... you name it.

: I can't say I've had your experience. I frequently print from Word Perfect,
: it's my wordprocessor of choice. I agree that _sometimes_ it's too late to
: try to kill something in the print queue, but very often it isn't. I've
: always believed this was linked to the relative sizes of the job, the spool
: buffer and the internal printer buffer. If you think about it:- with a 25k
: print job, going into a 10k buffer, the printer will be reading along the
: buffer and if you issue a cancel instruction, this either has to be
: prioritized in some way, (toggling one of the LPT port lines can do it,
: iirc, but NOT if you are connecting via USB) or you have to wait until the
: printer gets to it. I don't know exactly how a cancel printing instruction
: is implemented, but my experience is that if it isn't acted upon, it's not
: down to any version of Windows I've used, but is more likely to be a
: driver/printer "feature".

:>If the OS is not in charge of stopping bits from going to a printer driver,
:>then it should be, and that is the problem.

: It is in charge up to the spool buffer and should clear that (and does so
: perfectly well in my experience), but god forbid that it should meddle
: further down the line.

: --
: All the Best
: Ian Hoare
: http://www.souvigne.com
: mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website
 
Salut/Hi rci,

le/on Mon, 31 Jan 2005 16:43:53 GMT, tu disais/you said:-
I'm not saying the OS should be doing the driver function. I'm saying that
cutting bits off of flowing INTO the driver should be the OS function. To
hell with what the driver wants to do... if the OS doesn't want to send
bits, then the OS should stop sending bits.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it is! At least that's what is happening for me, with a HP5652 and
XP. If I press "cancell", then that's what happens most of the time.
And maybe that is the problem... that the os DOES stop sending bits, but the
driver sits there forever waiting for the EOF and won't reset to take a new
job.
Click to expand...

It is - hypothetically - possible that the OS isn't set up to send a "kill
this job" signal, or that if it is, the driver hasn't got the brains to
recognise it. But dumping the driver is only part of the job. I don't want
to appear unreasonable, but have to tried turning off spooling? Also, you
didn't answer the comment about printer buffers and USB. With a parallel
port, toggling one of the lines issues a "reset" instruction to the printer,
and it would be easy to implement that from the OS. But if the driver or
spool continues to pour stuff out, you've got real problems. I've had that
too. With USB, which is a high speed serial port, the printer buffer will
continue to read in data, and can only deal with it in order, there's no
"emergency reset" any more. I wonder if this isn't your problem.
In that case, the answer, once again, the OS is the solution. Kill the driver. Restart the
driver.
Click to expand...

But the OS doesn't necessarily know there's any reason to.
 
Glad to learn it's not just me!
I don't know squat about drivers etc, I only lnow that in windows 98 I could
stop a print job even when it had started to print out, but with xp pro it
frequently fails.
Hitting the cancel button on the printer sometimes works, cancelling through
the xp printers and faxes window never ever works if the job has started to
print. The only reliable way to clear the queue is to reboot and let the
thing print out (sometimes cancelling on the printer at this stage will work)
or just not cancel in the first place.
I'm using xp pro with an HP deskjet 1220
 
albionpjl said:
Glad to learn it's not just me!
I don't know squat about drivers etc, I only lnow that in windows 98 I
could
stop a print job even when it had started to print out, but with xp pro it
frequently fails.
Hitting the cancel button on the printer sometimes works, cancelling
through
the xp printers and faxes window never ever works if the job has started
to
print. The only reliable way to clear the queue is to reboot and let the
thing print out (sometimes cancelling on the printer at this stage will
work)
or just not cancel in the first place.
I'm using xp pro with an HP deskjet 1220
Click to expand...

"...don't know squat about drivers ..." You don't really need to. However,
if you have recently installed SP2, I suggest that you visit the HP site and
download a new version for your printer. http://www.hp.com Search for
"deskjet 1220" you'll find a bunch of help and drivers.
 
Back
Top