HP print driver issue

[symhelp]

We just resently switched our print servers, we were on windows 2003 and moved to windows 2008x64. i downloaded the windows 2008 x64 & 32 print drivers for all our printers. Some i had to use a UPD because it wasn't available. I originally downloaed the pcl6 driver but now 3 different hp models are having the same issue. when prining from excel it prints tons of junk pages. all other programs seem to pprint file. I switched the print drivers to Pcl5 and now it prints but before each jobs prints it also prints a page with "@PJL JOBATTR="JobAcct4=20100827171550" @PJL SET JOBATTR="JobAcct5=dd on it. We also have some richoh all in ones and have not been having any issues with them. just the hp printers, 3 diff models with same problem. Help!

 

[eritguy]

Older issue, but it's a printer setting...check this out:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...47626+1283397877254+28353475&threadId=1105201

 

[symhelp]

I saw that thread, personality is set for auto already. any other suggestions? thanks!

 

[DansDadUK]

I vaguely recall a similar problem from several years ago (before I retired) and the underlying problem was that the driver was NOT prefixing the PJL statements (at the beginning of each job) with a Universal Exit Language (UEL) escape sequence.

You could check to see if this is what is happening by doing a test print with the 'print to file' option selected in the printer Preferences dialogue.

Then examine the resultant .PRN file (you can open it with Notepad).
Whilst most of it may appear to be gobbledy-gook, all you are looking for is the first few characters:

%-12345X

where the first character (shown as  above) is the escape character (the character with decimal code 27, or hexadecimal 1B).

This should be followed by one or more @PJL commands.

If the UEL is NOT present, it may explain your symptoms - but I'm not sure what you could do about it, other than demand that MS and/or HP fix a bug in their driver.