4.0 vs 5.0 Printer Driver Differences

Note

NT4 printer drivers run in Kernel space however NT5 (windows 2000) printer drivers run in USER space. This means that while NT4 third party buggy drivers (like Epson's) can crash the system, Windows 2000 third party printer drivers cannot (at least in theory) crash the system.

When possible, always use Windows 2000 drivers. It's safer, the driver can still take out the printing subsystem but it's unlikely it can crash the whole OS.