Hi KAREN (of 2:252/171),
On , you wrote me:

 KW> The strange thing is that the printer has only recently started to
 KW> act this way.  It stalls and the power light flashes. 

Hmmm..  I wonder if this has anything to do with the paper slipping ever so
slightly and confusing the advance mechanism somehow into to thinking that
you have something similar to a paper jam.   When the rollers lose their
stickyness, the paper position measurement can be sending confusing
messages back to the printer program.


 KW>  When I look that up in my manual, it simply says, "if the power 
 KW> light flashes, the print carriage had stalled."  Duh.... It doesn't 
 KW> say why or what to do about it. 

Did you check out if there are more details about this on the printer
manufacturer's website?  Lexmark, right?


 KW> Heck, I've even turned off the screen saver in case that kicking in
 KW> had anything to do with it.  

Turning off the screen saver is an excellent idea.  The few seconds of
resources it needs could easily interfere at a critical moment when printer
commands needs to be processed and sent to the printer.  Also make sure you
don't have any of the "Power-Managment" stuff running or
configured to kick in TOO SOON.


 KW> I threatened to switch printers with the hubby, since he only prints
 KW> the odd piece of text anyway.  Maybe that's why he stuck extra RAM in 
 KW> my machine last night while I was out.  

Well..  printers are still so incredibly cheap.  If you want to consider a
newer model, it's easy to find one combatible with the existing cartridges
so you don't waste that part of the investment.

BTW.. if you are using a Lexmark, are you using the drivers that came with
the printer?  Don't use the generic driver that Window thinks is
"compatible".


 KW> I might not be able to keep it though as the machine seems to 
 KW> run slower now. He said that happens sometimes. 

So.. why wouldn't you be able to keep it just because it runs slower now?   

Just make sure that you don't have too many other "resident"
applications present in the bottom right-most part of the taskbar - by that
I mean the little applications (indicated by their respective little icons)
that load automatically at boot up.   They load a portion of themselves
into RAM memory, and rob otherwise useful resources.


 KW> I'll give it a few days to be sure before I let him take 
 KW> it back out though. And I'll print some pictures now to 
 KW> see if the extra RAM keeps the printer from stalling.  

Let us know how things go.


 KW> Thanks for your input.

Well.. some annoying things only need simple solutions.  I just wanted to
TRY and see if my suggestions could help solve the problem.


BTW..  it's a weird feeling to know that you live only about a 5 hour drive
from my house (Ontario, CANADA), yet I receive echomail messages from you
from Britain!  -->  "Origin: FONiX Info Systems * Berkshire UK *
www.fonix.org (2:252/171)"

===============================================================================

...August

--- FMail/Win32 1.60