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Hi, we're from the government. We're here to help you.
I didn't really think this joke would come back to haunt me on the Internet, but alas, I have been shot down in flames by one of my very own State of Kentucky web sites! Or possibly my Xerox DocuPrint P12 laser printer.
I located a form I needed on one of our state's Internet sites, but every time I tried to print it, my printer would stop dead in its tracks and tell me it was out of paper. I checked the tray, and beheld there was enough paper in there to print 150 copies. I looked for a paper jam, and the innards of the printer looked its usual black self. So I tried to print something else, and the printer kept telling me that it was already printing this form, and until it finished that job, it wasn't gonna print another thing! Jeesh! I checked all the settings & purge print jobs I could find, and there just wasn't going to be any printing done today! Finally in desperation, I turned off the printer and restarted the computer. Again I checked the settings and everything looked right, and I asked the printer for a test page, which came through perfectly. So I decided to print the form again. The "out of paper" light came on again, with the same dreadful message that it was printing that form and I wasn't going to print another thing until it finished that one. After a couple hours of frustration, and a computer inferiority complex, I decided that this shoddy form was my nemesis and quit trying to print it altogether.
Enter an intelligent, charming, handsome, distinctive, extraordinary, etc., etc., <g> techno-dweeb who is infuriatingly right most of the time... He tried to print out that darned form and got the same error message I did! Yeah! I suddenly felt smarter! However, he was able to print it out on two different HP printers at another location without incident, AND, with my Xerox printer, he was able to circumvent whatever it was that was denying me my printed form. I shouldn't have been quite so smug. The circumvention involved saving the document to my computer and removing the "locks" on the form, instead of printing directly from the web. In other words, he CHEATED by changing the rules!! But he did get the thing printed. <mutter, mumble>
The problem was that whoever created the document also locked the form so it couldn't be modified. By doing that, the form was also locked into using a specific paper tray. Unfortunately, between Word 2000, the form, and the Xerox print driver, the software decided to use what is actually an optional paper tray for the Xerox printer.
I asked Xerox technical support for an answer, and after walking me through a LOT of the same steps I had already tried, they finally instructed me to install an HP IIP LaserJet emula (Continued on page 12)
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