HP LaserJet 4 not printing with XP Professional

[Guest]

Moved my HP Laserjet 4L from my old system running W98 to my new system
running Windows XP and have been unsucessiful on getting anything to print.
When I send a page to the printer I see it being spooled and then it go to
LaLa Land. Have uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, printer and verified
Bios setting to no avail. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

How are you connecting the printer to the PC.... LPT? What is the LPT port
set to in the BIOS?

 

[Guest]

It is connected to LPT1 and I have tried changing the modes in the BIOS
to EPP,ECP,SPP and ECP-EPP all with same results, It shows the file being
printed but it just disappears and I get no output.

I also have completely uninstalled the printer and removed LPT1 from the
device manager and rebooted the system to ensure it no longer existed then I
shut down the system and connected the parallel cable to the printer and
powered up the system and it finds the new hardware and proceeds to install
the necessary drivers, etc. I had changed the port setting in the BIOS on
each occasion with same results.

The parallel cable is connected directly to the MB, No pass-through
connectors.

Using the drivers provided with Windows XP as the HP site does not show any
updated drivers for the 4L and suggests using the drivers that come with
Windows XP.

I booted up the system in DOS mode and tried the dir > lpt1 and nothing.
Have another system nearby running W98 and printer and cable work just fine
on it.

If Plug & Play recognizes the new hardware then the Parallel Port, Cable and
Printer check out and are not the problem unless I'm missing something. I
would think that the problem is either the drivers and/or the BIOS settings.

I have moved the printer and cable to another system I have which runs W98
and it works fine there.

Any additional recommendations on what to check/test would be greatly
appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Chuck]

Is this occurring on a Laptop by chance?
or a PC with an inexpensive MBD?
If so-- there is a possibility that the parallel port I/O chip is at fault.
It seems that some older printers with a "centronics" interface required
signal voltages higher than some of the parallel port chips (mainly used on
some laptops) can provide.
I suppose that some of the "cheap" plug in parallel port cards may have also
used the low current/voltage parallel port chips intended for laptops. (Ran
into this with one of the $7.00 cards from best buy several years ago.)

The driver for the parallel port is parport.sys on my XP system.
If you remove the parallel port from the system, the printer should not be
connected to the parallel port until it is reinstalled.
Then, you can (usually) start the printer driver process. I'd normally use
the windows install process to manually install the driver for this printer.

 

[Guest]

Well after numerous attempts and pulling my hair out I found the problem.
One of the pins in the parallel cable was not making a good contact, fixed
the pin and everything is working fine now.

Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions on what to look for.