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Difficulty: HardPrinter and Multifunction Device Issues

An IT support technician receives a ticket regarding a shared network laser printer. When users on the graphic design team send complex vector graphics documents to the printer, the machine outputs dozens of pages containing lines of garbled text and raw control code headers such as %!-PS-Adobe-3.0. However, administrative staff printing standard text documents to the same printer experience no issues. Which of the following is the most likely cause of this problem?

  1. An incompatible print driver (such as a PostScript driver assigned to a PCL-only printer) is installed on the graphic design workstations.Answer
  2. B
    The laser printer's fuser assembly is failing to maintain the necessary temperature to bind high-density graphic toner to the paper.
  3. C
    The network switch port connected to the printer is dropping packets, corrupting payload data at Layer 2.
  4. D
    The primary charge roller has degraded, preventing proper electrostatic charge distribution across the photosensitive drum.

Answer

An incompatible print driver (such as a PostScript driver assigned to a PCL-only printer) is installed on the graphic design workstations.
Garbled print jobs containing PostScript header code (%!-PS-Adobe-3.0) occur when the client computer sends print jobs using a driver language (e.g., PostScript) that the target printer cannot interpret (e.g., a PCL-only printer). The printer attempts to print the raw commands as plain text.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the reported symptom and patterns of failure.
Standard text documents print fine, but complex graphic files output raw code headers like %!-PS-Adobe-3.0.
Garbled output containing explicit print command language indicates that the printer receives raw data streams it cannot interpret.
2
Evaluate printer driver compatibility and page description language (PDL) settings.
The workstations sending vector graphics are using a PostScript driver, but the physical printer only supports PCL or lacks a PostScript interpreter.
When a non-supported PDL driver sends data, the printer renders the interpreted code commands directly onto paper as literal text.
3
Determine the correct remediation step.
Install and configure the correct vendor-specific PCL driver or universal print driver on the affected workstations.
Aligning the client driver with the printer's supported language resolves the garbled print issue.

Key Concept

Printer Page Description Languages (PDL) and Driver Compatibility
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Topics

Printer and Multifunction Device Issues

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