Printers are awful. Buy this little Brother laser printer if you need to print shipping labels or boarding passes, but otherwise my professional advice is to avoid printers at all costs. For example, if you update Windows while your PC is plugged into a USB printer, it might start printing a bunch of random text. It’s like you got a fax from a ghost stuck in 1996.
Microsoft issued an alert that a preview update for Windows 10 and 11 sent out on January 29th was causing some printers to randomly print a string of unintelligible text, starting with “POST /ipp/print HTTP/1.1” and continuing with more IPP headers. The alert was spotted by BleepingComputer.
It appears to be a semi-rare driver error, occurring only for models that are both connected to the updated Windows machine via USB and capable of using the IPP-over-USB system. Plus, with this being a preview update, the number of affected users is probably low. Microsoft implies that a bit of standard network communication gets accidentally printed out.
If you’re getting surprise printing sessions that are draining your ink and scaring the crap out of your cat, the good news is that there’s a fix. The support page offers a Group Policy update download for both Windows 10 and 11. Hopefully the kinks get worked out before the final update makes its way through the pipeline to more users.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.