Tutor: In this lesson,
we're going to talk about print job issues.
And this normally comes down to four main issues.
The print monitor, the print queue, the print spooler,
or the print driver.
Let's first talk about print monitors.
Now, a print monitor is a software program
that's used to transmit the print job to the printer
and provides status information back to the end user.
Now, normally if you're using a Windows machine
you're not going to be using a print monitor,
which comes directly from your manufacturer of your printer.
But in some Linux environments, Macintosh environments,
and even some Windows users
do use a third-party print monitor,
such as one provided by HP, Epson, Lexmark,
or other print manufacturers.
Personally, I found that print monitors
are not nearly as useful
as simply using the print queue or print spooler,
but it is something that you should be aware of.
Now, if you have a print monitor installed
from your manufacturer
they'll normally provide a desktop notification
anytime you send something to the printer.
In addition to this,
the print monitor will also look at
your toner and in cartridge levels
and notify you anytime they're getting low.
Now, the second area to be aware of is the print queue.
Now, the print queue is actually created
by the operating system,
and it's essentially a piece of software
that's going to collect all of the print jobs for you
and manage them.
As the print queue starts filling up,
it's going to place all the new jobs at the end of that queue,
and so it becomes a first-in, first-out printer priority.
As the jobs are queued up inside the print queue,
they will individually be sent over to the printer
for processing and printing out.
Now, if there's any issues with one of those print jobs
it will actually pause the queue
and keep collecting more jobs.
So if you're in an office environment,
and you have one large printer
that's shared by the entire office
and one person has clogged up that print queue
with a really large job,
everyone else will be waiting behind them
for that job to clear
before we can start using that printer again.
Similarly, if that large office printer had a paper jam,
all the jobs in the queue are going to be paused
until that paper jam is cleared
and that printer is brought back online.
The benefit of using a print queue
is that it can then store all those jobs
until it's ready to print
and therefore, you can send everything to your printer
and then come back in the morning
and have everything printed out for you.
Now, in addition to a print queue,
we also have something known as the print spooler.
Now, a print spooler is actually a small application
that manages the paper printing jobs
that are being sent from the computer,
the printer, or print server.
Now the print spooler is going to allow multiple print jobs
from within the print queue or buffer
to be able to be retrieved
and then sent over to the printer
in order to actually print those things out.
So the print queue and the print spooler
are going to work together.
The print queue is going to hold all the pending jobs.
The print spooler
is using the jobs that are active right now.
Now inside of Windows,
when you're dealing with the print spooler,
this is actually a service
that runs in the background of Windows,
and it does all the negotiation and setup with the printer
to make sure that all of those documents
can be printed one at a time.
Now, as you're working through the print monitors,
the print queue, and the prints spooler,
we sometimes get an output from the printer
that doesn't look right.
We call this a garbled print job.
Now, a garbled print job
is any output that comes out
that doesn't look like what you were expecting
and it basically looks scrambled or encrypted.
So if I wanted to print out
the words that I'm saying from this lesson to the printer,
and instead you got a bunch of symbols
instead of English words,
that would be a garbled print job.
So what causes a garbled print job?
Normally, this happens when you have a bad driver installed
for that particular printer.
For example, if I configured my system
to use an Epson print driver,
but I'm trying to print to an HP printer
that will cause garbled print jobs to happen
because that HP printer
doesn't understand the Epson driver's language,
and instead, it's going to incorrectly interpret that
and give me these messed up symbols as a result.
So if you start seeing garbled printouts,
normally this is going to be a driver issue.
If you're finding that this issue continues to happen
even if you're using the correct driver for your printer,
you may want to use a generic driver instead,
like PCL or Postscript
that's supported by almost all printers
and all applications,
that way you'll get
the right characters and words printed out,
instead of some strange symbols or garbled printouts.
Another thing that can cause these garbled printouts
is if you're using a font
that is not understood by the printer.
Again, if you're using a proper print driver
or applications that understand what those fonts are,
they should be able to render that printout properly.
But if they don't,
it may be a case
where you want to change out that font for something else
or download the appropriate font
and install it on that system.
So when it comes to print job issues,
if you start seeing multiple prints pending,
this could be an issue with your print monitor,
your print queue, or your print spooler.
And if you start seeing jumbled printouts
that's usually going to be an issue with a driver or a font
that is not correctly installed on your system.