Pinters "Blinking" in Printer Setup Utility

[deejay33]

Hello - Let me start by saying I am no Mac expert at all. I am the network admin for my company but only support two Macs and thus do not have much interaction with them but I am tech savy.

We have one of our Adv department living remote in a different state. Suddenly yesterday, when she went to print, she was given an error that there was no printer selected. Her only option was to install a new printer. This is strange because she has two network printers (one wireless and one by network cable through a small switch) and has Adobe Acrobat 7 so should also have the Adobe Printer available.

I had her go into the Printer Setup Utility through Apple->System Preferances->Printers. There she sees her three printers but they are all blinking on and off. What I mean by that is, the three are there, then gone, then there, then gone. She said they are not graying out but actually disappearing. She is unable to select them to delete them.

We have tried setting up a new printer but it does not detect the printers. I have had her power off both the physical printers to see if some type of network issue was causing the problem but the blinking continues.

I did have her try booting in "Safe Mode" which I understand does some system repair but after that was done and a reboot, the problem persists.

Does anyone have any ideas for this issue. Of course of all days, she needs to get a project printed to PDF by the end of the day for our printer to meet the deadline.

I would be very greatful for any ideas or help!

Thanks,
Daniel

Powermac G4 1.25Ghz Dual Proc Mac OS X (10.3.x)

 

[jmgalvin]

First the quick fix for "gotta get it done now!".

She should also be able to "print" or save as a postscript or eps file and then run it through Distiller for a press quality pdf or, in Acrobat Pro, use the CReate PDf command on the file menu than select the .ps or .eps file just created. If shes's using Adobe stuff, she should have the option to export a high quality pdf.

She can also open the doc that has to be made into the pdf and choose Print. On the next screen she'll see the "save as pdf" button at the bottom. That's the built in pdf creation in OSX and not connected with Acrobat. This should get the job done for now if great quality is not necessary. Things like Word docs, etc.

As for the major problem, if nothing is showing up, it would indicate some real strangeness, especially if she can't find the Adobe virtual printer. If it were the 2 actual printers, it would likely be due to something somebody did to the network, but the virtual printer is a stumper.




Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4 & G5

 

[deejay33]

Hello jmglavin,

Thank you for your help.

She was able to get the catalog out via an export to PDF option in Quark. Unfortunately the files turn out to be about 25MB per page that way and she had to upload over 600MB via her DSL connection. But it got done.

Now the problem still persists. I have some new info from working on the problem.

We were able to get the blinking to stop by selecting the check box to share the printer from within the Printer Setup Utility. This allowed us to click on the Delete button but we receive an error saying "Server error service unavailable". We are also getting the same error we when try to add a printer.

Doing some searching, I found that that points to the problem being related to the cups printing system in Mac OS X. I did the fix listed in this article twice

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107054

describing how to reset the printing system in OS 10.3 but it did not help.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[jmgalvin]

I'm assuming that everything was fine for some time and the problem just popped up. I also donot know how printers are set up, meaning I don't know if they are on a Windows network, etc. The "server error" seems to indicate that the printers are on a Windows network, but not sure. Usually when osx can't find a printer, it says it can't find it but does not mention a server.

I also don't know what version of osx she's using, from your second post, I'm guessing it's 10.4. Since you mentioned Quark, I assume she's running 6 or 7. If she's running 4 or 5, that will be running under the mac Classic enviromet (mac os 9) and the printing will be entirely differrent. IF she's running Quark 4 or 5 come back here and ask for further help.

If you wan to delete a printer and are having problems with Printer setup, you cna go t hard drive/user/library/printers. Open the folder and trash the various printers. Restart and open Printer setup to check.

The biggest single cause of any problems on a mac is corrupted preferences. You can go to hard drive/user/library/preferences. There you will find a bunch of files that start with "com.apple.print" After that you might see "printerproxy followed by teh name of the printer. The one you definitely want to trash is "com.apple.print;PrintCenter". You can also trash the prefs related to any computer.

However, it you read the linked page from the Apple site, they suggest repairing permissions. You do this by going to hard drive/Applications.utilities/Disk Utility. You'll see the reapir permission button on the bottom of the DU window. You don't have to worry about the "verify" button. Try this and see what happens. This cannot cause any harm.

While in disk utility you can also verify the disk to make sure it's ok. It should be but you can check. There';s a button at the bottom right of the DU window for "verify disk". If the disk is booboo you have to start from teh software install disk for the mac and run the version of DU on that disk to actually fix teh machine.

If you want to avoid a lot of headaches, since the user doesn't know shat to do, and you're far away. It might just be easiest to do an archive and instll of the OS. This is not hard but you have to make sure that yu do not do any OTHER type of install. Archive and install retains all settings, etc. and just installs a new os, renaming the ol one "privious system". You do this by inserting adn starting up from the software install disk and clicking OPTIONS. I think this willbe on teh second window. There You select Achive and install and run it. Whatever you do you DO NOT want to run "Restore" or wipe and install. If you and she cannot get to the archive and install come back here or read the Help on Archive and install.

Sorry I can't give you any quick answers, but this is the first I've heard of anybody having such a problem that was not only printers but also the Adobe virtual printer. Weve been running 50 osx machines since 03-04 nad have never had any problems.


Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4 & G5

 

[deejay33]

Resolved!

I was able to restore the printers by reinstalling the CUPS(Common Uinx Printing System)portion of the Mac OSX software. I found the solution on another forum. Here is what I did.

1. Downloaded a software called Pacifist from

http://www.charlesssoft.com.

2. Inserted the Mac Os 10.3 install disk and had Pacifist read the disks for installation packages.
3. Ran a Search for all entries with the word CUPS.
4. Highlighted all the the results in the window on the right and clicked the Install.

This effectively reinstalled the printing system. After a reboot, we were able to setup printers and printed.

Hope this helps someone down the road. Thank you for your help on this one jmgalvin!

Daniel