If you're using XP or windows2000, the first thing I would check is your page file size. You can have all the ram in the world, but if your printer driver needs to write a file to convert the pixels in your image to dots for printing on a page, not having enough swap space on your drive will choke the process.
I think the default allocation is 384 mb, which can be eaten up largely by the OS alone. If you've allocated less than a gig for swap space, that would lead to memory allocation errors. This setting is under start<control panel<system<advanced. Mine is set for 1024 megs. I've never had a memory alloc error.
The next thing I would check is the DPI setting for the printer. I'm not sure if you're already familiar with print graphics, or if this topic has already been covered in the forum, but I'll go into it just in case.
Image size and image resolution are two separate entities.
Size is the physical dimension of the printed image (like 1"x1") and
resolution is the density of pixels or dots per inch for the image. In print, the density of dots effects the quality or sharpness of the image.
In printing from a computer, a single pixel on screen is equivalent to a single dot on the page. Your image appears massive on the screen, as screens are only 72 pixels-per-inch.
A print-resolution graphic of 300 dots per inch that is 1"x1" will show up on screen as 4.16" x 4.16".
Printing any kind of graphics should be done at 300 dpi at least. Lower resolutions will make the image grainy. If you try to print a 72 dpi graphic without resolving the size vs. the resolution, it can max out the memory or only print part of the graphic. Some folks like to print at even higher dpi's, but 300 dpi (glossy-magazine quality) should be more than sufficient. I only use higher resolutions if I'm printing to film or transparencies. I once rendered out a 3D image for a trade show light box that was around 18000x23000 pixels! All you could see on the screen was the bottom left few inches.
As Schweinhund mentioned, printing high resolution images directly from most of the applications that come with Windows can lead to the problem you're having. Most image viewers are geared toward printing low resolution images from digital cameras or downloaded from the internet.
You can actually print very good quality images directly from MS Word or Powerpoint. If the image you're trying to print is 300 DPI, you can just insert it into a blank page, and it will usually resize the image to fit the page. Double clicking the image will open the dialog to adjust the image size to what you need.
I hope this helps and best of luck with your decals!
