Half my time so far seems to have been taken up with sorting out printer issues.
There are dozens of different desktop printers in various places in the company, and also several networked ones.

In one department, a dos machine which printed to a network printer (via Novell Netware)needed to be able to also print to a local desktop printer, which would be shared between 2 machines. The first step was to work out how to get it to lose the network printer connection on request. After scanning through the autoexec.bat file I noticed it was calling the file startnet.bat in the Novell Netware folder. In this file, one line included a capture command to 'capture' the network printer. A bit of reading later, I found that by typing an endcap command at dos you could lose the network printer. Bingo! It was then just a case of plugging a device sharer (basically a box with an A or B selector dial) in between the 2 PCs.

Next up, a desktop Epson wouldn't work. A message on screen said 'unknown error:return to your nearest epson dealer' or something like that. A web search revealed that there is a built-in counter in some Epson printers which causes this error after a specific number of prints. There is a pad which soaks up spilt ink inside the printer. The company estimates that this needs replacing at regular intervals, hence the error. The sites which mention this usually claim it's a con job - you take your printer in, the engineer takes it into the back room, resets the counter using special software, replaces the pad, then charges you way over the odds for the privilege. Anyway, the various free software I found which claimed to let you reset this yourself didn't stop the message. A new printer was bought.

Third problem: A desktop Okipage 6e started only printing some of the time. I noticed that the printer was disappearing and reappearing magically in the printers list. Tried installing different drivers - no joy. Tried printing directly - ditto. Tried it on another PC - same problem. Replaced drum with the only spare available (original was leaking toner) - no luck. Shelved it and replaced it with a working one that prints at a slant (the paper guide doesn't sit level). Probably haven't heard the last of this one.