Strangest printing problem ever

[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

 

[Unknown]

Run a registry cleaner is the worst advice you have given.

 

[E.Dub]

Try another USB plug-in.. if you have one on your computer.

 

[Rene Brehmer]

Hi Rene Brehmer,

Have you tried simply uninstalling the HP 1200 Printer. Reboot.

I haven't found any option to remove the driver. There's no uninstall
option anywhere for it. Removing the printer, just removes the printer, it
doesn't actually removes the files for the printer driver (I did a file
count before and after to double check). I'm not comfortable trying to dig
through all the DLLs and such and weed out the ones for the HP driver...

Do maintenance on the Hard Drive removing all \Temp files and
sub-folders from the \Temp Folders on the Hard Drive, then running Disk
Cleanup. Followed up running Chkdsk /r. Run a Registry Cleaner if available.
Reboot and reinstall the Printer Drivers before reconnecting the printer to
the computer.

Temp files are cleaned out regularly. Registry I always clean out
manually... takes forever but I don't trust the utilities. As long as
things don't get worse, I know I don't delete anything essential LOL. And
if I do there's always backup.


--
Rene Brehmer
IT Technician

North Hill Inn
http://www.northhillinn.com

 

[Rene Brehmer]

Sorry for the late response - inline and below.

{snip}

Have you tried running a System Restore back to a day when the printer worked? It
sounds like you've troubleshot all the possible hardware solutions and all that is
left is software. The only other thing you might try is to connect a completely
different printer to the system, just to see if Windows recognizes it. If it does
and the driver loads and it prints correctly, then you know the trouble is with the
HP 1200 driver itself - not a completely unheard of problem. If a different printer
fails to work, it would point to the Windows printing software or USB drivers -
either the MS USB drivers or the Dell Motherboard USB drivers.

System Restore is a problem. I have absolutely no clue when it started to
fail. They didn't tell me until atleast a month after it started screwing
up. And the System Restore don't go that far back.

I did try a different printer (I'm a bit limited on working spare
printers), a Dell. Computer didn't register a printer at all. Then I tried
installing the printer driver for the Dell without the printer installed,
and it got to the point where it says "please connect the printer now" so I
did... and nothing happened. Still not detected.

Tried all 4 USB ports, same issue. Tried the mouse in the port where the
printer's connected, and it still works, so I would assume the ports are
fine. Tried a USB flash drive in all the ports as well, still works.

In any case, I would probably assume the HP drivers were toast, since you're getting
the "unable to install PCL6" message, and completely uninstall them using Add/Remove
from Control Panel, if possible - you may have to do it manually though, probably
from Safe Mode. You'll have to look to HP for guidance on how to do this... I would
then go to HP's site and download the newest printer drivers for the 1200 and
attempt to reinstall.

Uninstalling seems to be where my pickle ruts. There is NO, none
whatsoever, uninstall option for the driver in question. Removing the
printer from Printers/Faxes is supposed to remove the driver, but in
reality it just unregisters the printer from the driver. Nothing's
physically removed from the system folders.
Tried HP support, but they won't help without a serial number, and the
serial # sticker is missing from this printer. And I have no clue which
sub-model this 1200 is, doesn't say anywhere on it.

I will try and dig deeper with HP and see if there's a way to remove these.
Have one other machine under service, identical model to the troublesome
one, will try and install the printer on there and see if it works. If it
does, then I may just have to switch the machines around and install
everything again.


--
Rene Brehmer
IT Technician

North Hill Inn
http://www.northhillinn.com

 

[Unknown]

Do you have a CD with the printer driver. If so run it. See if you get any
messages that the driver is installed and what action to take. You may get
all the instructions you need from that CD.

 

[Drew C]

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 Innhttp://www.northhillinn.com

try the pcl 5 driver