HP LaserJet 5L

[Doug]

My HP LaserJet 5L is not printing properly since I have
installed Windows XP on my computer. I have tried using
the printer driver that came with XP and have tried a
couple of suggested downloads from HP with no success. HP
no longer supports this printer. Some documents print
fine while others cause hang-ups and partial page printing
with some strange looking lines and characters. I have
experienced problems with Excel, Word and .pdf files. Any
suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Thomas Ferguson]

In what way is it misbehaving? Does it print at all? If so describe what the
output looks like: Is it sensible or contain garbage? Does it print part of
a page and quit?

If it prints something but that is garbled output, you can try changing the
BIOS setting for the port the printer uses.

Enter the BIOS setup routine as the computer starts and change the printer
port setting to SPP or such but _not_ ECP or EPP or ECP&EPP (see the
computer manual to find out how to do that).

Let us know.

Tom
MSMVP-DTS

 

[Doug]

Often the printer performs normally; however there are
instances when it will print a partial page and then stop
(yellow blinking light on printer). If I press the reset
button on the printer, it will restart and pick up
printing on the next sheet at the same physical point on
the page that it cut off on the first page. Sometimes I
get odd lines on the end of the first page when it does
this. Another example is on a Word document - it will
print the whole document in 12 font, but if I try to
change the entire text to 14 font it will do what I
described above (partial page, yellow light, reset and
resume on next page where it cut off on first page). I
will try your suggestion with the BIOS tomorrow, but any
other guidance or suggestions prior to that are sure
welcome. Thanks for your response!

 

[Quaoar]

My HP LaserJet 5L is not printing properly since I have
installed Windows XP on my computer. I have tried using
the printer driver that came with XP and have tried a
couple of suggested downloads from HP with no success. HP
no longer supports this printer. Some documents print
fine while others cause hang-ups and partial page printing
with some strange looking lines and characters. I have
experienced problems with Excel, Word and .pdf files. Any
suggestions? Thanks!

There are countless HP LJ 5L printers working successfully in WinXP
using the XP printer driver. However, there are also many of these
failing due to age. If you have another parallel cable, try it.
Otherwise, remove all vestiges of the driver and let XP reinstall the
native driver. Most users will agree that the HP driver is, well,
broken, and should not be installed.

Q