Re: Strangest printing problem ever
- From: Homer S. <Mr.Plow@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 12:38:58 -0400
On Fri, 30 May 2008 10:29:07 -0600, Rene Brehmer <rene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And yeah, this turned out be a problem printing, rather than a printer
problem.
We have 1 machine, that all of a sudden about a month ago, started to act
weird: A Dell OptiPlex 170L desktop wit a HP 1200 printer locally on USB.
It would print reports from Simply Accounting, but not anything else from
Simply. We first thought it was a Simply problem and reconfigured the
printer, reinstalled Simply, but it didn't change anything, you hit print,
it says it's printing, but job never shows up in spooler. It would still
print normally from any other program.
Then all of a sudden in the middle of the last payroll, it just stopped
being able to print at all. It would process the job, the spooler would
start running the job, transfer part of the data (or so it said), and then
all of a sudden it would stop and a bubble would come up saying "There was
an error while printing". I can't even get it to print the Windows test
pages, much less anything else.
I've tried reinstalling the driver, but it stops with a "unable to install
PCL6 driver". Tried connecting printer on parallel (EPT/EPP enabled)
instead, same problem. Tried connecting a different printer (a Dell 1110)
on the USB, known to work on a different computer, but the machine can't
find the printer at all. Checked the device manager, the HP printer isn't
listed (do it normally list the printers? I can't remember - haven't had to
fix printer problems forever).
Does USB work? I assume so, the mouse is on USB, and works fine. Spooler is
running, no errors in the event logs relating to anything that has to do
with printing. Does the printer work? Yeah, it seems to work fine on
different computer... with the same cable... And the computer prints just
fine to the network printer. But because this is where we do the payroll,
for security reasons we don't like printing that stuff on the network
printer, and we don't like having the cheque paper in that printer either.
Any ideas in this group? This by far beyond the strangest printing problem
I have ever run into...
Have you tried running a System Restore back to a day when the printer worked? It
sounds like you've troubleshot all the possible hardware solutions and all that is
left is software. The only other thing you might try is to connect a completely
different printer to the system, just to see if Windows recognizes it. If it does
and the driver loads and it prints correctly, then you know the trouble is with the
HP 1200 driver itself - not a completely unheard of problem. If a different printer
fails to work, it would point to the Windows printing software or USB drivers -
either the MS USB drivers or the Dell Motherboard USB drivers.
In any case, I would probably assume the HP drivers were toast, since you're getting
the "unable to install PCL6" message, and completely uninstall them using Add/Remove
from Control Panel, if possible - you may have to do it manually though, probably
from Safe Mode. You'll have to look to HP for guidance on how to do this... I would
then go to HP's site and download the newest printer drivers for the 1200 and
attempt to reinstall.
Good luck and post back what you found.
.
- References:
- Strangest printing problem ever
- From: Rene Brehmer
- Strangest printing problem ever
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