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Interesting HP printing problem

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by jlego

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I have an interesting printing issue. I have an HP laptop and docking station at my office running Windows XP professional. Connected to it I have a HP LaserJet 4 Plus. The other day I was printing some documents and an error popped up and from then out I cannot print. I have tried the following:
1. Replaced the docking station
2. Replaced the parallel cable with a known working cable.
3. Uninstalled drivers and reinstalled drivers till the cows have come home, including using a windows 2000 driver.
4. On hp's request, removed all hp printers setup on my computer and purged the registry of any HP printers.
5. On hp's request, removed the printerupg.inf and .pnf(? can't remember) and replace the .inf with the file from the install CD.
6. I have deleted the lpt port and let it reinstall
7. Stopped, started, and restarted the print spooler many times.
8. Ensured the printer was ok but attaching to another workstation that is identical to my own and it worked fine.

What is even stranger is this. I have a little canon bubble jet I travel with. It works fine via usb. However, the print heads died so I am borrowing an HP DeskJet 460. This is also connected via usb. It has the same error as the lpt attached LJ4! I simply can't print to HP printers that are attached to my machine. Further complicating issues is that there are 2 network hp printers that I use and they work just fine. I can also print to a couple of networked copiers in the office.

This has to be some underlying windows/hp file issue. I would be grateful for any new suggestions.

10 replies

by jlego

Thank you. Apparently not all the children have gone to school today.

by hal 9000

It's a college student on Work Placement who thinks that it should be offered a job with the pay rate of Bill Gates as a starting point and work up on a monthly increase from there along with Bonuses. The last time that it made an appearance here it got the sack for [b]Computer Misuse.[/b]

Hopefully the place that it's at now will soon pickup on the excess usage and get rid of it again. If you attempt to ignore it, it doesn't go away.

Col

by mjd420nova

It appears that the BIOS for the unit and the driverss are not playing nice together. A reload of the BIOS or resetting to default wouls get you back to square one and should restore the unit back to operation. The big clue is the HP failure, not any other mfgr. Seems to be a real rash of units taking a big dump after installing HP printer drivers.

by jlego

excellent suggestion. I reinstalled the bios and I received the same error. I then set the bios to defaults and unfortunately receive the same error. Any other ideas? Based on the fact that it is only hp's but for some reason is all HPs (even the newer usb deskjet 460 has the same error), I think it is some kind of corruption that happened between Microsoft and HP in driver or printer function land.

by sleepin'dawg

This was my home printer and ran into a similar problem. I also tried everything from uninstalling and reinstalling drivers and a new parallel cable. It took quite a bit of attempting different things but I ended up inserting a new toner cartridge (a genuine HP replacement, not a refill) and then printed out test pages from the printer's menu. It took me two days of horsing around with this, trying different combinations and settings and I still feel my [i]"solution"[/i] doesn't make any sense but it did work, in the end. Why did it work??? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the printer gods decided to smile on me.

The HP 4M+ was an excellent printer for its time and I put a lot of pages through it but when it went down again a year later, I sent it to HP for reconditioning and went out and bought myself a Samsung 1740 which cost me less than $200, prints faster and serves my printer requirements just as well. I did consider getting a colour laser but while they're quite reasonable, the cost of the consumables is outrageous in a personal setting. The Samsung was so cheap I bought an Epson inkjet for whatever colour work I might need, plus it gives me the ability to output digital photos as well.

I gave the HP to my grandaughter and so far it's working well for her but you reach a point where you can't afford to waste time with something like this. BTW, the bill from HP for overhauling my 4M+ was almost as much as the cost of the Samsung, admittedly after I received the mail in rebate from Office Depot.

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

by jlego

This would be a better choice if I owned the equipment. Since this is for work and I'm not going to be spending money on it, I'm not going to go that route. Also, I'm not sure how that worked for you, but I'm pretty sure this is a windows to printer issue since the error occurs even before spooling can begin. Thank you very much for the input though.

by hal 9000

Just about everything possible at this stage. So I would suggest dumping all of your data to a remote site on the LAN without any form of Encryption and then using a wiping utility to wipe the HDD and reinstall Windows and your software.

This is generally the fastest way out of a problem like this as it's just a [b]Windows Issue[/b] which is impossible to find out so I wipe with something like Boot & Nuke available here

http://tinyurl.com/4rfur

And then perform a clean install of the OS & Software. You can then drag your Data back from the Storage Place that you have chosen on the LAN and be up and running fairly quickly as apposed to spending days attempting to make the thing work and then having to wipe and reload.

I've seen this happen with so much HP gear over the years that I no longer attempt a Windows Repair it's much faster to wipe & reload and a lot less hassle as well.

Col

by jlego

Yeah, I was using that as my last resort. I guess it's re-install time.

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