Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Throw the Printer in the Trash

There is one little icon in the upper right hand corner of the AOL screen that is dangerous.  It is unprotected.  You can click it by accident, and I have several times.  I cannot find it when I am looking for it, but I sure can find it when I DON'T want it.

It starts printing whatever document that is on the screen.  Sound handy?  Well, it's NOT. Because it is going to print that document whether you want it to or not.  If it happens to be a fifty page treatise on whale-bone, you're gonna get it ALL. 

People tell me I can stop my printer when it is printing, but I never can.  I go to control panel, select "printer", then select the actual printer (though I have only one), then right click until I see a command that says "Clear all documents."  I click...it doesn't. 

It does stop printing the pages.  Instead it prints one line of gibberish on the top of each page, and turns out page after page of trash.

I believe that once the printer starts printing a fifty to one hundred page document, you might as well let it go... print em all. You can turn it off, unplug it, let it cool its heels until Monday morning, and when you turn it on,.... it begins printing the document again.

Once you accidentally hit that icon, you might as well throw the printer in the trash, and get a new one...but don't hit that icon with the new one.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI CHUCK!
I TOO HAVE HAD THIS HAPPEN TO ME, AND HAVE FOUND A WAY TO STOP THE PRINTING AFTER THE FIRST PAGE!!! INSTEAD OF GOING THROUGH THE TROUBLE OF TRYING TO FIND THE PRINTER IN THE CONTROL PANEL...

I JUST TAKE ALL THE PAPER OUT OF THE PRINTER!!! THEN A LITTLE SCREEN POPS UP ON THE MONITOR THAT SAYS,"PRINTER OUT OF PAPER...CONTINUE OR CANCEL? ...TO WHICH I CLICK CANCEL! AFTER I CLICK CANCEL , I PUT MY PAPER BACK IN!
THERE MAY BE A BETTER WAY... BUT HEY...THIS WORKS FOR ME EVERYTIME!
HOPE THIS HELPS YOU OUT!
LOVE YA,
CARLENE

Anonymous said...

I think I see the little icon you are talking about. Guess I've been lucky so far. How aggravating. I'm going to try to remember what Carlene says she does just in case. Paula

Anonymous said...

WOW!  I never even SAW that little printer icon next to the heart icon...good to know, and of course, now that I know about it, I'll probably hit it by mistake!
Murphy's Law.
K

Anonymous said...

Yep, I know what you mean Chuck. I have done that a couple of times. My printer will start printing and I think what the heck is going on. I go to the bottom of the computer to the taskbar and there is a printer icon. I click on it or maybe right click on it and hit cancel and thankfully it stops. Ink is to expensive to waste like that. Helen

Anonymous said...

    I've made major printing errors, too. I find though if I don't put too much paper in the printer, or even pull the extra out, that on my computer, a prompt will come up asking me if I want to cancel printing.
Jude
http://journals.aol.com/jmorancoyle/MyWay

Anonymous said...

Oh, I like what commenter #1 says.  When my printer wants to print, it always pulls up a thing asking me if I want to print it first.  So I hit okay or cancel.  Ugh, this is awful for you.  After I do start it, though, I can't stop.  And I know what you mean, it will finish the job no matter what you try to do! LOL  Hi Chuck =)! xox
http://journals.aol.com/valphish/ThereisaSeason