Cyclical Redundancy Check 1

[bygeek]

I have a customer I just installed a new Hp Photo printer for last week. USB, win98. She says now it won't print and returns a Cyclical Redundancy Check error. I tried the HP website, but can't find anything on this. Has anyone come across this?

 

[felixc]

CRC error. Hmmm. The data packets are corrupted. A low level error. It sounds like a very bad cable connection.

 

[bcastner]

The error report is most likely from the hard disk drive.

 

[bygeek]

From the hard drive only when it tried to print? Are you saying she can't use the printer without replacing the hard drive?

 

[bcastner]

Most Windows OS versions run a print job through a disk-based spooler.

A CRC is a disk error, and not a cable issue.

 

[bcastner]

I should amend that slightly. CRC is used in some ethernet error detection, which could be a physical cable fault under ethernet.

 

[bygeek]

If it's a spooler issue, what if I change the settings to print direct without spooling?

 

[John Lewis]

The exact wording of the error, including the title of the popup box and label in the taskbar may be of some value.

I think that this is a error coming from the printer driver, not the spooler subsystem or from Windows. Although you could see a CRC error while printing something due to a problem with the part of the hard drive storing the spool file, it should be presented as a hardware problem, not a spooler failure. The error message as presented here does not give enough information to rule out the possibility.

If this is a hard drive problem, turning spooling off may or may not relieve the problem. All new printers (with the exception of some more expensive models) spool. If you turn off the spooler, the driver will simply spool the job instead of passing it off to the spooler. These printers simply do not have enough memory to handle a print job otherwise.

It does sound like a check of the hard drive may be in order. I haven't worked with Win98 for quite some time, but perhaps someone else can point you to directions for checking the hard drive for errors.

I would start with a new USB cable. CRC errors are quite common with USB connections. A driver for a device that uses USB is expected to trap and recover from a certain amount of CRC errors, but if there are many errors communication with the device would be slow and unreliable, so at some point the error message has to be thrown up and the operation aborted.

It is also possible, of course that the USB connector or the USB controller is damaged on either the computer or the printer. Does the printer work if attached to another computer?

 

[bcastner]

This note on an HP all-in-one printer may prove helpful:

http://www.epinions.com/content_129519816324

 

[bygeek]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going out there tomorrow morning and will post back.

 

[bygeek]

Bill,

Thanks for the epinions article, it did the trick. I changed the spooler settings to RAW and Print after last page is spooled and it worked fine. A star for you.

 

[bcastner]

Thanks for the feedback, I am sure it will help others.

I cannot tell you how many times HP printer and scanner drivers have brought me to tears. But I continue to swear by HP printers.

Best regards,
Bill Castner