Printing in Silhouette Studio

[BowBow]

Thanks again to all who've been kind enough to respond on this subject. I don't know about a buffer overrun Zippy1970 as I'm not at all technically gifted when it comes to computers and their add-ons. How do I find out what size my buffer is and also how much SS needs? I'm running Windows 7 but as the prints from other software programmes (Irfanview & Serif PagePlusX2) are perfect surely if it was a printer problem they would be affected too? I usually only print in A5 size.

I spoke to Brian at Graphtec yesterday, not having had any response to the files I sent last week, and he thinks it may be a driver problem but if so why do I occasionally get a perfect first print (usually on scrap paper to ensure that everything is correct!) then only corruptions afterwards? I am now getting around some things by only importing very small images (for decoupage) after printing the main picture from Irfanview but it takes a lot of trial and error getting the size exactly right as SS doesn't import at the same size as the original picture print and even if the measurements look to be correct on the work space the printed image isn't exactly right, I usually have to multiply it by about 1.41%. I have tried to find out what my Drivers are, following Brian's instructions, but the only option is to Add a new driver, I can't find out what the existing one is. I keep meaning to try Rosemary's Hinge method, I can see that it should work but I get distracted by trying everything else first and then run out of time. My Node editing is getting better though and I've had a few small perfect cuts which encourages me to persevere, if only I could solve the print problem I'd be a very happy bunny. Thanks again for all the responses.
Shirley.[/COLOR]

[BowBow]

P.S. to the above. Brian also suggested that I try saving my images as PNG files and importing those so I shall try that when I have time (will have to open the files in Paint I believe).

[Zippy1970]

Let me explain what I mean with a buffer overrun.

Obviously a printer can't print as fast as the computer sends data to it so the printer needs a "buffer" to temporarily store the incoming data. It uses its own memory for that. It prints something, gets the next chunk of data from its buffer, prints it, gets the next chunk of data, and so on.

Of course the printer doesn't have an infinite amount of memory so especially with print jobs that require a large amount of memory (like high resolution images), this memory can get filled up. When this happens, the computer - or more accurately, the application - should stop sending data to it.

Some applications handle such an event gracefully. They stop sending data and simply wait until the printer says it's able to receive data again. Other applications don't handle this so well. They ignore the warning they are getting and keep sending data. Since the printer isn't able to store (or print) this data, it's dropped. This is called a buffer overrun. Then when the printer is able to receive data again, some (print-) data is missing resulting in corruption of the printed image.

One way to deal with this, is to let Windows come to the rescue. Instead of the data being directly sent to the printer, it's being sent to a temporary buffer on your hard disk. This is called spooling. Applications are unaware of this - they simply think they are still sending the data directly to the printer. But this time, all print data is stored on your hard disk first before Windows sends it to the printer. Of course, your printer buffer will still fill up but Windows knows how to handle this and you will no longer get buffer overruns.

To see if Windows is setup for spooling, click the Start button and in the search box, type

control printers

and press the Enter Key. This will open up the Devices and Printers control panel. Find your printer and right click it. On the menu that appears, click Printer Properties. A small window will pop-up. Click the Advanced tab. Make sure Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster is enabled.

If it's already enabled, try changing the settings (so if Start printing after last page is spooled is enabled, change it to Start printing immediately and vice versa). If that doesn't help and spooling was initially on, try switching it off.

If nothing helps, you can at least rule out a spooling problem (make sure you set your spooling settings back to what they were).

[BowBow]

Curioser and curioser! The options you listed were all ticked so I changed to Start printing after last page is spooled but it didn't make any difference so then I changed to Print directly to the printer. Not only was the actual printing much quicker but the corruption was much less - only a 7mm gap and nothing out of alignment, even though the print was much bigger, i.e. A4 instead of A5. In the past the bigger the print was the greater the corruption.
Thank you for your detailed instruction Zippy1970, my problem has not been solved but at least you suggested something that effected a change in the situation which is more than support@sil.am or Graphtec achieved.
I tried updating the driver as Brian suggested but my computer spent 10 minutes updating devices from Windows after which my printer had disappeared from the list completely!!

[Zippy1970]

Well, in all honesty, updating the drivers would be my first suggestion also. This is an old printer and its bundled drivers are probably not optimized for Windows 7. So yeah, you probably should first make sure you are using the latest drivers.

[BowBow]

Zippy1970 Yes, I'd love to update my drivers but I've tried, without success (see last sentence in my previous post). If you can help with that I shall be very grateful.