Printer request causes computer restart

[dbish]

Computer: Gateway DX4831. Windows 7 Home Edition 64 bit. Samsung ML-2525
USB printer


The printer is attached to my computer as a local printer but is visible
to the home network. Starting yesterday, for no apparent reason, any time
a print request is issued either by the local computer or from across the
network, the printer will begin to print after about 4 seconds the local
computer restarts by itself. The action is identical to me hitting the
restart button - Gateway logo, drivers load, etc. and then Win7 stops and
says Windows did not shut down properly the previous time and would I like
to start in safe mode (3 variations) or start normally. If I start
normally Windows comes up fine with no apparent problems.

There have been no hardware changes and the computer has not been moved or
wires jiggled. The only recent software change is my copy of MalwareBytes
did an software update which required a restart.

I have tried the following without progress:
Did system restore to back before the MalwareBytes update and to a point
two days ago.

Installed to latest printer driver.

unplugged the printer (power and USB) and rebooted the computer before
plugging in.

Plugged the Printer USB cable into a different port.

The only other thing I can think of is several months ago I undated my
iTunes software and afterwards it couldn't find my iPod. Seemed to be a
USB recognition poroblem. I updated my Intel USB software and driver and
still had a really hard time. SInce this is a USB printer?

It is really weird. Computer had worked fine for 18 months and for reason

it now does this.

Thanks for any help.

Dave

 

[HGS]

I( had a similar problem with the ML2525 and also the ML2955DW which was not even connected to the computer. Turned out that the problem occurred only when the printer was on the same electrical circuit as the computer and it was tripping a defective backup power supply which then shut down completely. This happened only with these printers, not with my Canon MP830 inkjet. Best I can figure the Samsung printers generate a significant power surge when they wake up and under the right circumstances this will reset or turn off your computer. When I removed the defective backup power supply the reset problem stopped.

 

[dbish]

My answer was definitely out of left field. I use a APC UPS battery backup/UPS. My UPS software said the battery was still good but the the reality was the battery was dead. Whenever I tried to print the extra power drain on the UPS was enough to kick the UPS into power outage mode which killed the print job and more importantly the computer. When I replaced the UPS the the problem went away. I could have looked for that solution for years before I lucked into figuring it out.

 

[dbish]

Best answer selected by dbish.