The image you see in this blog posting is of a small piece of plastic that was kicked out of my HP 722c printer on Friday. This piece of plastic is not part of the internal workings of the printer, but rather, part of the mechanics of making sure the paper that is spit out of the printer comes out evenly. It's a part that that would, normally, be "unessential" to the workings of a printer, but as I found out, this small piece of plastic is costly in both time and money.
This small piece of plastic prevented my printer from doing anything other than a flashing light, telling me if I wanted to print any document, I was screwed. After a photo session Saturday (annual family photos), Wifey and I went to Office Depot and bought a new HP PSC1500 printer to replace the otherwise faithful 722c. I got the 1500 out of the box, set it up, and started the instal process (software on a CD to use the printer). 90% done with installing the software, I get an error message, saying a driver for CD burning software I have on my computer is incompatible with the printer software. The suggestion made by the printer software was to uninstall the "offending" software, continue with the printer installation, then upgrade the cd burning software. Like some sort of lemming, I followed the software's instructions.
What I didn't know until it was too late was that the CD burning software was bundled with the drivers that enabled my computer to recognize, and thus use, my 2 cd drives. For the next 36-48 hours, I tried deleting unnecessary files and backing up others by e-mailing them to myself at my office. Removing that CD software also screwed-up my Arial font, which is system-wide.
I downloaded the latest version of the CD burning software today, and TADA, I have my CD drives back. I tried installing the printer again. It gave me the same error message I had before, but this time, I deleted the offending file, and the install finished just fine. So, now, I've got my CD drives back and access to a new printer, but my Arial font is still screwed up. Tried today to download a new copy to fix that problem, but all I can find are web sites to buy the Arial font. Pardon me, but no.
