Strangest problem printing ever...

[Guest Rene Brehmer]

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...

 

--

Rene Brehmer

IT Technician

 

North Hill Inn

http://www.northhillinn.com

[Guest Michael Jennings]

Re: Strangest problem printing ever...

 

HP has a scrubber - bi120600.exe - final utility download at this link:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=411184&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=411179&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=228

 

Have you run that?

 

"Rene Brehmer" <rene@metalbunny.net> wrote in message

news:1ex5rf3q3j1li$.1ix1cafusveot.dlg@40tude.net...

> 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...

>

> --

> Rene Brehmer

> IT Technician

>

> North Hill Inn

> http://www.northhillinn.com