Client says:
“I bought a new printer, and since I plugged it in, my computer won’t boot properly …it gives a message like: “this program has performed an illegal operation…”.
I think: Its probably some virus or spyware that’s causing the blue screen …And the printer might have aggravated the situation.
I ask: Windows version? (win 98 )
I ask: Are you on the internet? (they were, a few months ago (dialup) ; but not anymore)
So, when I get there, I start the computer & it crashes before it completes its startup …Hmm …after some F8 & and lower level diagnostics, I see it also crashes while starting in safe mode… this is not good.
I decide to take the computer back home & work on it. It does have spyware, but it doesn’t really explain the severity of the blue screens …I clean up the spyware & then run a re-install of windows, so that I have a known starting point. After that, all is well. (little did I know…)
I get to the clients house, start windows, then plug in the X2250 multi-function printer. It wants to install its drivers from the CD …fair enough.
About 90% through the driver install, I get a blue screen! Aaaaaargh!
After that, the computer is back to crashing at every reboot …I give my apologies & take the computer, printer, & its driver CD with me, & I work on it back home.
Lexmark technical support (I think it’s in India) wasn’t very helpful. They will not help unless win 98 is patched to the latest microsoft releases. Given that I already spent a LOT of time on this problem, I don’t want to waste more time, when there is a good chance that the problem might not disappear & lexmark could then say something like “Oh, that’s not happened before, we will have to pass this back to the developers …it might take a few months to fix this for you”
So I ask the client: Are you prepared to upgrade to win XP? It will cost $xxx.
Clint says yes.
So I install win XP, restore clients data, install the lexmark driver, and at last, its all working.
Maybe its just me, but from now on, I will not buy lexmark …it feels to me that they have lowered their prices by cutting the quality of their software drivers.
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