Hi,

I hope someone may be able to help. If you think this would be better
posted to a different group, please let me know, as I am new to this
particular corner of usenet!

I have a Pentium II running Win98. I use a Canon Bubblejet printer with
it and all has been fine for several years.

Last weekend, I borrowed a laptop running Windows XP and plugged my
printer into that machine to do some printing. Again, all worked fine.
In the course of printing, I changed one or two "properties" settings
in the print dialogue box.

Now that I am back on my own desktop, I find that every time the
printer gets anywhere near the PC, the PC freezes completely. And by
"anywhere near", I mean plugging in a printer cable, with components on
or off. Absolutely no action at all - Ctrl Alt Del does nothing, the
cursor vanishes and only by removing the power completely can I make
any progress. Then when I try to restart the PC, the fan comes on and
there's a click or two as if the disk drive is about to launch into
action, but nothing happens and the screen remains silent. Only with
lots of trial and error and unplugging things and long delays can I get
the PC back up.

Now it seems to me unlikely that the printer has changed settings
during the period of use with the laptop, as I understand the changes I
made to have registered on the laptop, not on the printer. I wonder
idly whether there's some sort of issue with static electricity, as the
problem occurs as soon as I plug the cable in.

But I'm at a loss. Any suggestions gratefull received!

Thanks.

Tim
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