Print jobs not printing thru cups

[Michael Lai]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:

>I have to apologize to you. I was so set on the answer I did not pay
>enough attention to your question. Now I see that you printer is not a
>network printer but locally attached to you FC machine. You indicate
>that you can't print from your Windows machine. I assume the MS Word
>or Notepad were on a different machine that is running Windows. So as
>I understand it you want to use the FC machine as a print-server for
>your Windows machine. Are you using samba to do the printing? Can you
>print to the HP Laserjet 1300 from the FC machine?
>
>I am not at all sure how print-service from  a FC machine is made
>available to a Windows machine. If I had realized that was what you
>were doing I should have shut up. But I still think the answers to my
>questions would be helpful.
>  
>

No problem akonstam.  I appreciate that you are trying to help.  Here is 
my current setup.  I have three printers connected to my FC machine:

HP PSC 2210 (via usb - /dev/usb/lp0)
HP LaserJet 1300 (via usb - /dev/usb/lp1)
HP LaserJet 4L (via parallel - /dev/lp0)

These printers are shared through samba.  Here is printer section of my 
samba config:

[printers]
        comment = All Printers
        path = /var/spool/samba
        browseable = yes
        printing=cups
        public = yes
        guest ok = yes
        printable = yes

Majority of the time, my colleagues were using the LaserJet1300 as the 
default printer (through Windows XP).  For the first several weeks, 
print jobs were processed fine but then about a week ago, I noticed a 
degradation in the printing process.  It started with some print jobs 
would not process the first time and have to press print a second or 
third time before the print job would go through.  Later, I found that 
some Word documents would print but others wouldn't.  That really 
stomped me.  Yet, if I connect the printer locally to my Windows 
desktop, those docs that wouldn't print before would print now.

Now, the situation has worsened to the point where none of the documents 
are printing now.  When I try to print through the PSC 2210 printer, it 
would print several pages of funny characters when there the document 
has only page.  The only reliable printer that I can print from now is 
the LaserJet 4L.  I am really at a loss on how to fix this as I am no 
cups expert.  I am tempted to totally uninstall cups and reinstall it 
again.  I would be happy to supply any additional information that you 
need to analyze this problem.

Thanks in advance.