You didn't mention a model number, but some printers have print heads that are separate from the ink cartridges. I've had two Canons and three HPs where that was the case. If it's just a matter of print heads that have gone bad, replacing them might solve your problem, and such replacement is an "expected maintenance." Bad print heads would cause the problem you described.

Your operating manual will tell you whether your MP machine has separate heads, if you look for it. If you have the "quick setup" instructions, you should also be able to tell, since installing the heads is a separate step in the first setup.

If it's a fairly cheap printer, it's probably unlikely to have separate heads, but it wouldn't hurt to check. If you don't have separate heads, the print heads are built into each ink cartridge and are replaced every time you put a new cartridge in.

If you don't have the manual or setup card, you should be able to download them easily from the HP web site, although they may be more difficult to find for a very old model. A last resort would be to hit the web "sales department" at HP, where they offer ink and accessories and look for whether they offer to sell you parts for your printer you didn't know it had.

Most MP machines, especially HP's, have a fairly sophisticated internal program. You can usually reset it by turning off the printer, then disconnecting the power cord for several minutes, and then restarting. Some machines may have a "deep reset" process for which you hold down a specific button on the machine while you turn off - but that procedure is almost NEVER mentioned in the User Guides, so you'd have to go to HP Support to find out how to run it. Letting it sit with power disconnected will eventually clear everything, but it may take a rather long time in recent machines since an internal battery may have to run down.

If you've been in the habit of leaving the printer turned on for long periods when it's not in use, it's possible that some ink has congealed in any "feed pipes" the ink flows through if your printer does have separate printheads. When you turn the printer off, the cartridges are retracted to a "parking place" where the "itty bitty holes" are protected from drying out, but as long as the printer is ON they may be just left "hanging in the wind."

This should NEVER be a problem with printers with heads-in-the-ink-cartridges, since there are no ink paths outside the cartridges, but for those with separate heads where this might happen cleaning can be "difficult." A procedure that sometimes works is to run a cleaning cycle to make sure all the lines are filled, then turn off the printer for an hour or so to "park the heads" and let the fresh ink "soak into the old stuff." Turn back on and print a test page, and if necessary repeat the cleaning cycle, power down, let soak. It may take several cycles. (I've had to do this, about 7 cycles spread over two days, ONCE on my HP8500; but it eventually worked perfectly.)

If the problem is caused by Microsoft's updates, there's a fair possibility that HP will have an updated driver that you can download and install for a fairly new printer; but HP changes models frequently and seldom updates any that are "obsolete" (by their standards) so anything out of warranty is unlikely to get an update unless it was an extremely popular model.

If a driver disk came with your printer and no updated driver is available, it might be a good idea to uninstall the printer and then reinstall the driver from the original disk, since file corruption isn't as uncommon as it should be (mostly of the .dll file(s) created the first time a new printer/driver is "discovered" by your computer).

John