Strange printer issue in windows 7

[rclarke250]

OK, put on the thinking caps for this one.

I have a windows 7 x64 machine, when it goes to print to a Xerox Phaser network attached printer, you can see and hear the printer start the warm up, the spooler has the job, and then the job disappears like the job is sent, nothing prints on the printer, no paper pick. The job is listed in the job history on the print server as completed. Same thing happens when trying to print a windows test page, except if I uninstall the printer, and then install it again, the first time I tell it to send a test page to the printer at the completion of the install it prints the page. Won't print a test page or a .txt file after that.

All other machines on the network print to the printer no problem. From the troubled machine I can click on the printer and "read" the status of the printer, even pull data from the printer to set paper type that is loaded. I just don't get where the job is going. This happens in both LPR, and RAW mode. I've run Ccleaner,Malwarebytes,SS&D. I really don't want to run a repair install but I might have to, as I can not find what is messed up in this machine.

 

[DSummZZZ]

Are the other machines that can print 64 bit? There may be an issue with Xerox's 64 bit driver.


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[rclarke250]

Yep. All of them are windows 7 X64 Ultimate. Except one laptop it is xp sp3.

 

[DSummZZZ]

Hmmm. That's odd.
I have had issues in the past where (believe it or not) the screen resolution has caused grief with printer drivers too.
Maybe playing around with that would help.


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[DTracy]

Is the printer installed on a print server?
Do you install the drivers locally or are they installed from the print server?
Do you print to the print server or print directly to the printer?


Thanks,
Dave.

 

[cdogg]

Also, when you reinstall the printer, don't just pick the driver from the list of already installed drivers. Instead, reinstall it from CD (or download) forcing a reinstall of the driver in Windows.

Please answer Dave's questions above. While you're at it, also verify that the other workstations are using the exact same driver and have the same settings under "Device Settings" in the printer's properties. Something could be off like "Job storage" or "Mopiar" being enabled/disabled or the amount of memory.

 

[rclarke250]

Direct to the network port on the printer, it has a built in print server. Yes I force it to use the new driver I downloaded, doesn't matter, also, I tried going back a month and that was no help either, but this was working fine before, for years. All of the windows 7 units use the same driver, as it hasn't been updated since 2010. Standard, settings from install, it is not a custom setup.

 

[DTracy]

What about a different user on the same workstation?

 

[rclarke250]

Same issue with a new account. What I don't understand, is during the installation of the drivers, and when it asks to print a test page it prints that first time, even if it is still in the que, and I add another test page, the first pone prints, the second one doesn't. Time to get crazy in the registry. I have a backup if it goes sideways. Maybe I'll turn it into my windows 8 testbed, and blow it all away.

 

[DTracy]

You know you could probably re-image and recover the data in less than two hours.

Registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\ [printer name] \CopyFiles\BIDI

Dave.

 

[rclarke250]

I know, it's just....I want to know what is going on....so frustrating. A little more info, I found that if I go into print management, and choose the printer, and tell it to print the test page from there, it does it every time. Deleting all instances of the port, and everything associated with Xerox in the registry and installing the driver again, had no effect.

 

[DTracy]

You know you could probably re-image and recover the data in less than two hours.



Dave.

 

[DTracy]

I was just thinking, have you tried moving this workstation to a different port/location, or swapping with another workstation?

Dave.

 

[rclarke250]

lol, the BIDI key doesn't exist on the machine.

 

[DTracy]

Sorry...

 

[rclarke250]

oh, well... time to attack this in a different direction, oh, something I did find out, If I connect the printer through the USB port, and take off the network, install driver, it prints the test page the first time as before, but If I try to print a document, the printer gives an error 016-720, which is a PDL error, looking this up, it says a command was sent to the printer, that it can't perform, weird. It was a flat txt document in notepad.

 

[DTracy]

Is that the only printer you have?

 

[rclarke250]

only one.

 

[goombawaho]

The only thing that pops into my mind is "printer firmware update". I would say that is likely NOT the issue since all the rest of the PCs print to it and I would be you have already checked that.

One more idea would be to change the network cable from the PC to the wall jack and then maybe change the switch port the wall jack is plugged into.

 

[rclarke250]

Well, I got it to print, from notepad, went into printer properties, and disabled advanced features.