Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Can't print  (Read 1366 times)

Eldor

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 68
    • http://www.gemst.com/photos
Can't print
« on: April 01, 2008, 12:15:38 pm »

I'm pulling my hair out in frustration...

I just cannot print to my network printers anymore.  And I don't know where to turn or what to do.

Here's the scenario:

Printer A: Brother Multi-Function fax/laser/scanner directly on LAN
Printer B: Brother standalone network laser printer directly on LAN
Printer C: Canon iPF6100 connected via WiFi gateway directly to LAN

Computer A: (My computer) WinXP Pro SP2 notebook connected to all three printers
Computer B: Vista Home notebook - connected only to printer A:
Computer C: WinXP Pro SP2 desktop - connected only to printer B:
Computer D: Win2K Pro acting as file-server NOT connected to any printer

All computers are running Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 with firewall.

The ONLY computer with printing problems is my Computer A:.  And the problems are with ALL printers.  The problems just started a couple of weeks ago, and I've been trying, without success, to solve the problem.  I can PING all three printers successfully.  But I cannot print a test page or even from Notepad.  What happens is that it APPEARS to start to print and then stalls, eventually giving me a "failed to print" error.

Here's what I have tried so far:

1) Re-installed printer drivers.
2) Removed completely all the printer drivers using Uninstall plus a utility from Brother to remove all traces.  Reinstalled drivers from scratch.
3) Restored an image backup to my computer from December, from way before any printing problems started.
4) Turned off the Firewall completely, and then even turned off ALL protection from Kaspersky.

Nothing solved the problem.

Even though my computer seems to be the only one affected, I don't believe it's the computer or any setting.  (If it was, the image restore from a few months ago should have worked.)  Also on Saturday, I was able to print without problem to Printer A: and Printer C:.  (Printer B: and Computer C: were turned off.)  Today I cannot print to any printer.  And the computer in question was off all Sunday/Monday.  

Nothing changed in the configuration.

Printing appears to start, but about about 30 seconds to a minute, I get a "Failed to print" error message and nothing comes out of the printer.  If someone else tries to print to that printer afterwards, often my job WILL come out, but there's printing only on about the top inch or two with the rest of the page blank.  And I'm talking about printing text from Notepad or the printer test page through the driver.

I was on the phone with Brother tech support for over half an hour and they finally said since I can PING to the printers successfully, there is nothing they can do and the problem must be at my end.  They suggested that the timing of this problem is coincidental with Microsoft's latest patches.  But I can't find anything about this anywhere.

Can anyone suggest something to try?
Logged

Mosccol

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 88
Can't print
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2008, 01:53:00 pm »

Ok, outside my smug Get a Mac answer, what can you do?

If I understand correctly, you are accessing the printers via the LAN. I also assume that you are using DHCP.

I have had similar problems in the past and the one thing that seems to work is to assign a fixed IP to each printer. Then reconfigure your printer connections using the IP addresses.
Logged
Canon 7 & L Glass + iPhone 6 ... Where n
Pages: [1]   Go Up