laser printer freezes - help, anyone, please?

[James Anderson]

I have an HP 1012 laserjet as well as two injet printers connected to my PC
(recent model PC, Windows XP, USB2.0 ports) . They all worked perfectly at
one time, but now, quite often, when I send a job to the laser, it freezes
in the print queue. I can't find any way to "unstick" the job other than to
reboot the computer, at which point the frozen job, still saved in the print
queue, then prints normally. This never happens with the inkjet color
printers. In fact, when I'm in a hurry to print something, and it freezes in
the laser queue, I just resend it to one of the inkjets.

Anyone seen this kind of behavior? Anyone know how to fix it??

 

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I have an HP 1012 laserjet as well as two injet printers connected to my PC
(recent model PC, Windows XP, USB2.0 ports) .

Do you know when the problem started? Could be a conflict of some sort with
the drivers. Try using the Windows System Restore. It has cured problems
for me in the past.

 

[ato_zee]

I can't find any way to "unstick" the job other than to
reboot the computer, at which point the frozen job, still saved in the print
queue, then prints normally.

Any error message from the laser?
Have the files got bigger over time?
It might print a letter ok, but throw a document with a 2meg
image embedded in it and it might overflow a buffer, either
the spool or the printers.

 

[Al Bundy]

I have an HP 1012 laserjet as well as two injet printers connected to my PC
(recent model PC, Windows XP, USB2.0 ports) . They all worked perfectly at
one time, but now, quite often, when I send a job to the laser, it freezes
in the print queue. I can't find any way to "unstick" the job other than to
reboot the computer, at which point the frozen job, still saved in the print
queue, then prints normally. This never happens with the inkjet color
printers. In fact, when I'm in a hurry to print something, and it freezes in
the laser queue, I just resend it to one of the inkjets.

Anyone seen this kind of behavior? Anyone know how to fix it??

The old standby methods are unplug it, reload the drivers, and/or reset
the defaults. I don't have an HP laser, but for a Canon for example, I
can have orange lights saying the print head is bad. I discovered that
resetting the printer defaults cured the problem and no print head
change was needed.
Also, try printing from different applications to be sure this is not
an application software problem.

 

[Burt]

I have an HP 1012 laserjet as well as two injet printers connected to my PC
(recent model PC, Windows XP, USB2.0 ports) . They all worked perfectly at
one time, but now, quite often, when I send a job to the laser, it freezes
in the print queue. I can't find any way to "unstick" the job other than to
reboot the computer, at which point the frozen job, still saved in the
print queue, then prints normally. This never happens with the inkjet color
printers. In fact, when I'm in a hurry to print something, and it freezes
in the laser queue, I just resend it to one of the inkjets.

Anyone seen this kind of behavior? Anyone know how to fix it??

I've had this problem with a Canon ip5000 and have also seen similar
problems reported in an XP newsgroup. After reinstalling the driver and
spending over a half hour with Canon Tech reps trying to solve the problem I
finally went into the Canon driver and set it to printing directly to the
printer instead of the spooler. Although it now works without freezing you
have to wait until the entire print job is complete before you are able to
use the computer. Try that approach to see if it relates to the spooler.
Oddly enough, my HP5p works with the spooler but the ip5000 doesn't! When I
replace the ip5000 with an i960 with the same USB cable the i960 works WITH
the spooler whereas the ip5000 didn't. I think the problem is with XP and
its spooler and I also think that this occurred as a result of an automatic
update some months ago. Try it after bypassing the spooler and report back.

 

[James Anderson]

I've had this problem with a Canon ip5000 and have also seen similar
problems reported in an XP newsgroup. After reinstalling the driver and
spending over a half hour with Canon Tech reps trying to solve the problem
I finally went into the Canon driver and set it to printing directly to
the printer instead of the spooler. Although it now works without
freezing you have to wait until the entire print job is complete before
you are able to use the computer. Try that approach to see if it relates
to the spooler. Oddly enough, my HP5p works with the spooler but the
ip5000 doesn't! When I replace the ip5000 with an i960 with the same USB
cable the i960 works WITH the spooler whereas the ip5000 didn't. I think
the problem is with XP and its spooler and I also think that this occurred
as a result of an automatic update some months ago. Try it after
bypassing the spooler and report back.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. In order to keep my original question
brief, I didn't mention that I'd already tried all the usual things,
including uninstalling the printer drivers, downloading the latest version
from HP, and reinstalling. I did, in fact, try to bypass the XP spooler, but
when I click on "Print direct to printer" it gives me an error message
"Printer settings could not be saved. Operation could not be completed."
That's probably an indication of where the problem lies, but it isn't any
help if I can't fix it.

 

[Burt]

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. In order to keep my original question
brief, I didn't mention that I'd already tried all the usual things,
including uninstalling the printer drivers, downloading the latest version
from HP, and reinstalling. I did, in fact, try to bypass the XP spooler,
but when I click on "Print direct to printer" it gives me an error message
"Printer settings could not be saved. Operation could not be completed."
That's probably an indication of where the problem lies, but it isn't any
help if I can't fix it.

If you tried to bypass the spooler while there was a printjob in the queue
you should try it after you've rebooted and the queue is clear. I did get
the same message at one point, but I couldn't tell you what I did to get it
because I was at the end of a two hour nightmare trying to get the printer
to work!