Memory Question

[jholland1964]

I am running 98se, have a 20GB hard drive with 15Gb free, 384MB of RAM. I have a HP Photosmart 7550 Printer. Created a multicolored document with clip art and a photo with Microsoft Publisher and when trying to print I got message;"Not enough memory to complete task". I shut down everything on my computer, other than what I needed to print and was able to print. But my question is why would I get this type of message and why would my memory suddenly be depleted to the point where I could not print? I had gotten clip art and colors from the Publisher program and the photo was inserted from My Documents. I have created documents like this in the past with Publisher and never had gotten this type of message before. I did have to replace hard drive in January so this is the first time I have used Publisher since then. Is it possible I have a setting wrong or a memory swap file set up incorrectly?

[King Grover]

it could be refering to the memory in the printer.

try a different driver?

[jholland1964]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Do you mean I should look for a a new driver from HP or are you referring to a different driver of some type for the computer?

[King Grover]

try a different printer driver from HP's website.

[DonJ]

Win98 drivers for your PhotoSmart 7550. Also, notice the links there for FAQ's, manuals, etc.

You might also check out Display Screen Error Messages.

[jholland1964]

Have most update driver. Also checked error messages. Removed unneeded items in Start Menu. Guess I will just have to wait and see.

[NooNoo]

It does rather sound that this graphic intensive document is too large for the printer to handle. If you have two computers networked, try print it from the pc that does not have the printer connected.

[kato2274]

how big is the graphic (size in mb) I've seen this happen when in an effort to get the best quality an image is scanned at like 4800dpi which makes it insanely huge. the software or printer just can't handle it.

just for kicks, copy the image and resize it to like 1/2 or 1/4 original size and see if it works.

[jholland1964]

The entire document is 5.59MB. The photo itself is 494KB. Personally, I too think that the size was the problem but wanted some other opinions.

[paraflyer]

One other thing to check: Boot into Safe Mode, then look in the \windows\Spool folder and clear everything out. Also purge any HPIxxxx files from \windows\temp folder.

Based on what I've seen here at the hospital, larger print jobs have a tendency to stall when the apps are attempting to write a spool file and there's already files lovated in it. I thin Windows just "forgets" which file to read out to the print drivers if there's more than one....so it just quits.

[confus-ed]

Eh !!!! ????

You are all mad .....

Created a multicolored document with clip art and a photo with Microsoft Publisher and when trying to print I got message;"Not enough memory to complete task".

&

I shut down everything on my computer, other than what I needed to print and was able to print

So that'd be the print process sucessfully completing on the same machine ... without a new print driver, any new memory, a smaller print job and all/any of the suggestions made....

So wouldn't that be saying you'd run out of main memory so the job couldn't be queued ....?

You asked "my question is why would I get this type of message and why would my memory suddenly be depleted to the point where I could not print" so I'd say as you know having loads of processes (proggies) running would of course result in that. Cutting and pasting from the clipboard with a big file is very memory intensive as you can end up with several copies in memory at once because of how crummily OLE works, you get one in the source, a copy in mem, and another in the target document .... so for any image you cut & paste it'll use at least 3 times that much main memory to get it from place a to b ....

Can you tell us how your swapfile is configured ?

Perhaps I'm not seeing something, but this looks straightforward to me ....

[jholland1964]

Let Windows manage virtual memory settings

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by jholland1964
Let Windows manage virtual memory settings

Oh .... well that kinda shoots me in the foot ! .... I was expecting to see either a set memory size or 'no virtual memory'....

It doesn't change the fact that when you closed other proggies you suddenly had it working ! There's a whole load of KB articles about out of memory errors for various incarnations of office and OLE (object linked embedding) .... so I still think its one of those .... try searching the KB for 'publisher' & 'print' there's loads of those too .... a lot specific to HP printers !! You never said what versions of what ...

All things considered for how often its happened to you, I'd be putting up with it and just closing some apps next time it won't print....

Not a good answer ... but the best you'll get from me on a Saturday with a hangover !!!

[jholland1964]

Thanks for your info. Since this is the only time this has happened I would imagine your suggestions are correct. Rarely use this program anyway so I will not worry about it unless it becomes a real issue.