Does Virus in files cause printing issues

[adityasrinivasb]

Hi

One of my friend gave me a PDF file of 400 pages and I decided to get a hard copy of it. I went to a printer shop and gave the file for printing. The shop has those big printer cum photocopy machines with them . On a HP machine, the print was OK for the first 70 pages but after that all vague characters where printing on the pages. We stopped the print and gave the print to a Canon machine. But the paper was getting Jammed on the Canon machine for every 5 pages

The shopkeeper told me that if there is virus embedded in the PDF file, paper would JAM or vague characters would be printed. I am curious to know. Is this true? Can somebody kindly confirm this?

Regards
Srinivas

 

[mikeymikec]

I've never heard of a virus causing a paper jam. What would be the point? Even if the malware replaced the printer driver, I doubt it could cause the printer to suffer a paper jam.

TBH I can't think of any way that one could consistently cause any printer to suffer a paper jam through software alone.

If I had a 400-page document and the first 70 pages printed OK, I'd respond by telling the software to print page 71, after viewing the page first to see whether it looks as I'd expect it to.

 

[JeffMD]

Virus, no, corrupt PDFs, maybe, huge waste of paper you made, definitely.

 

[mpo]

I can think of a few things that affect printing of pdfs.

The pdf may have had a font that was not on your system. It is always best to embed the fonts to the pdf if you include any fonts outside of the regular palate of Word fonts.

You printed the pdf from a Chrome or Firefox tab. For whatever reason, printing from a browser causes more problems than printing from Acrobat Reader. Chrome seems to be particularly bad at printing pdfs, in my experience.

Lastly, the pdf may be corrupted.

 

[master_shake_]

why not start the print from the 71st page if the 70th page was fine?

that way you can tell if it's just a virus or the printer is stupid.

 

[sm625]

More likely it is due to adobe bloat. How does the print preview look?

 

[redzo]

The shopkeeper told me that if there is virus embedded in the PDF file, paper would JAM or vague characters would be printed.

Printers jam the paper due to mechanical failures.
It is time to look for another printer shop.