Basically, there are two types of print drivers: kernel mode and user mode [23]. To understand the different Microsoft Windows print drivers and how these two types of drivers impact the end user, we need to go back to the Microsoft Operating System (OS) history and talk a bit about the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. People who had used the Microsoft OS might remember that printing was a task that could really bring the whole OS down just because of a printer driver failure. That's because NT 4.0 supported just the kernel-mode printer drivers [23], which ran on a privileged operating mode, so due to the failure, these drivers could hang the whole OS (these kinds of drivers are the ones that are there in Version 2).

Starting with Microsoft Windows 2000, a new Version 3 printer driver was introduced, and that printer driver ran on the user mode. The difference is that when running the printer driver on the user mode the error or bug on...