printer won't write to lpt1

Hello,

I'm writing on behalf of my father. He has a lexmark optra s 1250 that won't print. He has an IBM pc and is running on Win ME. It had been acting up and he had a friend work on it. Since then it has not been printing at all.
The error message that comes up is:
"There was an error writing to LPT1:for the printer (Lexmark...)
Cannot access the port. It may be in use by another program. Quit other programs and try again."
He deleted and reinstalled the printer drivers, but still no luck.
Any ideas of what may be the issue?
Thanks,
-L