Performance Problems

If the printer is installed, recognized by Vista, and printing, now we wander into the realm of performance problems. Many little things can go wrong with a printer that is really out of the purview of this tutorial. For example, if the printer is out of paper, then you probably don't need us to tell you to add more paper. But who has not been stymied by that at least once? Go ahead and check the paper tray anyway.

That said, one way to improve a slow printer is to check the print spooler. The print spooler is a little application that temporarily stores print jobs on the computer's hard drive or in memory until the printer is ready to print them. If you have been waiting a long time and see an error message that mentions the print spooler, you might need to restart the Print Spooler service on your computer. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
2. Click System And Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools and then Double-click Services.
4. Right-click the Print Spooler service, and select Properties.
5. On the General tab, in the Startup Type drop-down list, select Automatic.
6. If the service is not running, under Service Status, click the Start button, and then click OK.