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What causes an installed printer to go bad?

A client has an HP OfficeJet 6400 installed via network cabling and a static IP address. She called me today complaining that she couldn't get any documents to print.

So I check the printer options in the control panel and find three or so documents "stuck" there (I tried deleting them and they didn't go away). So I open the explorer to \windows\system32\spooler\PRINTERS and try to delete the files in there, but I get an "accessed denied" message. Reboot into safe mode, delete the files, and return to Windows, but still cannot print (same symptoms).

I delete the printer and reinstall it and afterwards everything seems to be working fine.

So here are my questions, since I never understood why it works that way:

How does the spooler get jammed?
How do drivers get corrupted (if that's what occurred)?

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hypercube

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SOLUTION

JohnnyCanuck

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nobus

your question can only be answered AFTER you have found what was the cause
in most cases, they simply remedy it with the latest driver - or sometimes an OLDER driver, or changing to postscript driver
it's amazing pc still work more or less given everything that can go wrong..