Bit Rot ?
 
full hard drive where its spooling the print outs ?
 
maybe clean the connectors with contact cleaner.
 
sounds like the system they have at the DMV.
bunch of dot matrix printers from the  80's
 
 
 
 

connectors do get oxidized.
and dot matrix printers can get electrically noisy
causing all kinds of weird issues that come and go
 
bits do flip states on hard disks and in memory
 
over time lots of weird stuff can creep in
 
Raid 5 or 6 disk arrays help
the use of ECC memory on the server helps
 
if you need something cheap look for a refurbish HP rack server
 
I have several DL-380 gen 5's
drives are cheap for them so you can buy spares
 
fixed up my server a year ago. new pervasive. windows server 2008 r2
server 2012 is even better and I hear easier to setup.
 
I think I did the whole package including having a vendor come in to configure the users on the server 2008 was about 3500 bucks including replacing a few clients with used pc's to the minimum of windows XP
 
total cost vs the worry of having my old server going out was worth it
 
got rid of my tape backup and went to mozy pro with a local disk backup.
 
 
you can get cheap servers with hardware raid here
 
http://www.serversupply.com/products/part_search/pid_lookup.asp?pid=115619&g clid=CjwKEAjwhqShBRDS95LciqqaonISJADj1rgaTXioyIW8e0tMByOVPlduQ4DE_dlVDpvpgWK7ovIaOhoCdADw_wcB