In recent weeks, my Canon BJC-70 printer changed its mode of operation. Firstly, it frequently produces a warning that ‘The margins of section 1 are outside the printable area’ even though I have not changed the style of my documents. Secondly, the ‘Print’ dialogue has changed. Previously I had a choice of greyscale, colour or monochrome on the first ‘page’ of the dialogue, but now I must click through to ‘Properties’ > ‘Graphics’ > ‘Colour’ to find the option. Furthermore, it defaults to printing colour, so I must set the colour options to black and white each time I print. How can I stop the error message occurring and also default the printer to black and white? I have not, to my knowledge, downloaded any new printer drivers so I am mystified by this change of dialogue. Is it possible the system has defaulted to some generic driver in Windows? The computer is running Windows 98.

It certainly appears that the printer drivers on your machine have been changed, since the printing dialogue has changed. I am unsure why (and how) this occurred, but it’s possible that for some reason Windows might have uninstalled the drivers and then installed generic drivers once it rediscovered the device. As a first step towards fixing this problem, I suggest that you reinstall the original Canon drivers for your printer. We will need to firstly delete the existing printer, so go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘Printers’ control panel. Highlight your printer and right-click, then select ‘Delete’ from the context-menu. Once the printer has been deleted, go to www.canon.com.au/products/printers/bj_printers/bj30_drivers.html and download the drivers for your printer. After they are downloaded, double-click the .EXE to extract the files. A text file will appear on screen with instructions on how to install the printer drivers (if it doesn’t, view the directory to which the files were extracted and open INSTALL.TXT). It is very important that you read and follow those instructions.

Once you have installed the printer drivers, we want to set the default colour setting. Open the ‘Printers’ control panel and right-click on your printer and select ‘Properties’. Through the properties, you should be able to make the printing preferences dialogue appear (like when printing through programs) where you can select the colour setting. When you configure the setting through the printer properties, this will become the default setting for all programs, so you won’t need to change the setting each time you print in a different program and each time you reboot the computer. I am unsure where the setting is located, as this differs depending on the driver being used. However, you may need to click a button like ‘Printing Preferences’. Should you continue to receive the message about the margins being set outside the printable area, try changing the paper size setting for the printer (which is also located in the printing preferences). It may be currently set as Letter, whereas it should be set as A4.