driversprintingwindows-xp
While printing to a network shared printer, some documents printed from Windows XP machines cause an additional page to be printed with the following text
PCL XL error
Warning: IllegalMediaSource
However, when printing on Windows 7 machines, there is no such issue. What causes this and how to fix it?
It looks like recent Symantec definition updates broke something with one of the Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) policies in use on our systems. Thanks for the tip @joeqwerty. The organization seems to want to keep this component installed, so they changed the rule to log instead of block. Here are the details:
After disabing the "Prevent modification of system files (HIPS) [AC14]" policy, client printer mapping and printer driver installs worked correctly. Here are some related screenshots as a visual aid:
The best solution would probably be to exclude the IPS component from all Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) client installs. If your organization prefers to keep the HIPS installed, then you must wrangle with botched policies like this one.
I had a similar issue and these are the steps I took:
Removing the printer from the client host.
Remove / reinstall / update the printer driver at the printing server, if you remove the printer, make sure you re-create it with the same name it had, so any references in its clients are not broken
Re-add the printer on the client host, it will pull the driver from the printing server
It installed the same version, but only after that it worked properly. Apparently the driver was corrupted
Best Answer
Related question: PCL XL Error
The problem lies in the usage of PCL6 drivers. It is likely that Windows XP does not support the drivers perfectly and thus causes errors (Illegal Media Source means that it tries to fetch paper from a tray that doesn't exist). PCL5e has been around for longer and doesn't have such issues.
Bottom line: use PCL5e over PCL6 if you encounter problems.