Epson Stylus Photo R1800 and Vista

[Dif]

Hi all,
I am experiencing problems with Epson Stylus Photo R1800 and Vista.

When I launch a print the first page get printed up to half the page,
than I get a blank page, and than the printer get crazy and start to
print an infinite ammount of pages with different portion of text
starting from random position of the page.

I downloaded the official drivers from the Espon site. The printer is
not directly connected to the computer, but it is shared on the
network by a D-Link DP-301U print server. The WinXP computers can
print without problems.

Of course I have already tried to reinstall the drivers, but without
effect.

Any idea?

Thank in advance.

 

[Jan Alter]

Could be a flow control or insufficient printer memory problem.

PC keeps sending data when printer says stop, buffers
full, but the message doesn't get through.
Once the buffer fills it goes into garbage mode.
Most D-Link stuff I've met is flaky, they seem to
keep moving from spec to spec, cheap vendor to
cheap vendor, so the install disk doesn't match
the device version it comes with. Their website is a
mess with so many drivers for each device, and
instructions on how to fathom out which version you
have.
There are two forms of flow control, hardware and
software,
XP may use one, Vista the other, Vista still has a lot
of driver issues anyway, I went back to XP because
of that.
Check if you have the latest D-Link drivers.

To verify that the problem exists because of networking issues try
connecting the printer directly to the computer and printing from there. And
the other question is if this problem just started and you had been able to
print over the network without problems before.

 

[Arthur Entlich]

The problem you are describing is usually caused by some type of
disruption of the data flow (handshaking) between the printer and the
computer/print server. There is some information provided in the file
header which "syncs" the printer to the data stream. If this
handshaking or header information gets "separated" from the rest of the
file, due to a break in the datastream, the printer may begin to
interpret the data it receives as ASCII text strings, carriage commands
such as carriage returns and page advances, etc.

Causes for this are potentially from several sources. Poor cabling, or
bad interfacing, defective interface hardware (a bad port chip) flaky
memory or other memory issues in either the computer or printer,
inadequate hard drive space or errors due to hard drive failing
scrambling the printer spool area (or in a server, possibly it's
memory), occasionally a corrupted driver, wrong protocols being called
up, or sometimes interrupts colliding mangling the data stream, etc.

The fact that it is occurring at a regular point part way through the
printing process may mean that something (hard drive, memory buffer,
etc, is being filled or reaching a defective point), or that some other
software is interrupting the process at a certain time during the
printing process.

It's one of those problems where it is best to eliminate as many
variables as possible, by removing anything that you can to streamline
the hardware elements. You might try removing the print server and
print direct and see if that resolves the problem. Print servers of the
type you are speaking of sometimes have internal memory, firmware or
driver issues. Try removing it from the equation and see if that helps.
If it does, make sure the unit has the most current firmware
installed, and check for any driver upgrades.

Make sure all cabling is reasonable quality, well inserted and locked
down. If you are using USB interfacing, make sure the cables are of
reasonable length, limit connections to the most direct routing, and
even try removing other USB hubs or peripherals, and go direct.

It probably doesn't hurt to defrag you hard drive to make sure adequate
space is available for printer spooling.

Try these and report back. Although it would almost seem obvious that
the problem is Vista related, it may be another fault, or with a
component which is not understanding Vista printing protocols, some of
which has changed since XP.

Art


If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/