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HP612C Brings Dell PC to Knees

HP612C is connected to parallel port of a new Dell 128MB, 500 MHZ, W98 PC. When the printer is printing, the Dell almost stalls, very slow and halting in responding to mouse and keyboard.

As soon as printing stops, PC is fine. I got latest drivers from HP, replaced the cable with a new HP one (this helped some but not a whole lot), made sure not too much was running in background. No conflicts show, and all other apps and devices are fine. (scanner is on USB, ZIP drive is internal) Also checked the printer settings, trying RAW and whatever that other one is, EMC or something, no difference, also tried spooling and not.

Could the PC's memory be choked up somehow? It's several months old.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

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rayt333

Actually this is fairly normal, with the newer cheaper printers coming out these days, it puts more of a load on the system resources then the older printers did with a slower computer. I have a HP970 and it slows things down to a degree, in the last six months I have had a HP712 and a HP612, the HP612 was the worst of all about slowing the computer down, plus since it was the slowest printing per page then the slowdowns seemed worse since they lasted longer, by comparison I hooked an old dot matrix printer up just to compare and it didn't slow the computer down a bit, but it took forever to finish the print job. At least it used very little of the computers resources.
So what you have is a trade off, faster speed, cheaper printers but they use more of the computers resources which in turn slows downs everything else you try to do at the same time.

jajr

ASKER

briancassin's suggestions were thorough.. I tried them,and they did not help. In light of the subsequent answer, I conclude that it's mainly the fault of the cheap printer design. Thanks very much for the advice though!

jajr

ASKER

rayt33 provided what is probably the correct answer, darn it! Next time, I'll be more careful in selecting the printer. This answer warrants points, but since I had to answer the first answer, it appears tohave closed out. If there's a way to award points to rayt33, he should get them too. Thanks.