A strange printing problem

To me, at least.

I have a Brother H-5350DN laser printer, with an USB connection, as well as a network port (for sharing).

The printer works as it should, however from my floortop I can't send print jobs over the network. Connecting it directly using an USB cable works. However, and this is what puzzles me, from every other PC in the house network printing works just fine. WT..something?

Installation works, printer is detected. But printing a testpage fails, error message says just that page failed to print. Suggested trouble shooting results in nothing. No error messages in windows's event log. Can't see track of it in the printer queue. (Not sure that it reaches the queue, I've tried with larger documents, but can't find them in the queue).

Don't know how long I've had this problem. Since the USB connection worked, and the net worked for the other machines, I didn't spend too much time looking into it. I've had it for months, both under Win 8 and Win 10.

Yesterday I decided to move the printer and connect it to the USB output of the router (Netgear, WNDR4300). Several reasons, one being support for airprint. Sharing the printer on the router requires additional software (ReadySHARE Printer Utility, latest version). Installation works on every computer in the house, as do printing, including airprint from the tables. With one exception *drum roll*: my floortop. Installation makes the computer hang, and I have to reboot it using the swedish button.

I believe these two problems are related.

I've downloaded and installed the latest drivers and updated firmware. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the thing, running as administrator and normal user. I've looked for hidden devices, found remains of one that could cause problems and removed it. I've threatened the hardware with uncontrolled rage and violence (when alone in the house).

I'm completely lost here. I have googled and googled and googled, haven't found anything - I have trouble finding a sufficiently specific search string, so there is a lot of noise. There must be something specifically wrong with the setup on my floortop, but I've installed printer drivers and software on the other pc's (all on win10), and I can't see that I've done anything different with the floortop.

pibbur who has decided against tearing his hair out.

Sounds like either a network issue or a network printer driver issue. Have you tried completely deleting the printer drivers from your "floortop"? I don't know what floortop means, by the way.

In a command prompt: printui /s

Under drivers - delete ALL drivers. You can't do this without deleting the actual printer installation first, so you need to do that.

Then try manually installing the printer under devices - and perhaps try using a completely barebones driver - just to test if it works for printing at all. Use, for instance, a HP Laserjet 2200 PCL driver. That's a pretty basic printing driver.

If it's not driver related, then perhaps it's network related. Try manually assigning a new IP address to the printer and manually installing it as a TCP/IP printer on the floortop - again with a primitive driver.

Well, I suppose some driver for your hardware in your floor-top must be incompatible with the printer driver. Try booting into safe-mode and enable spooler service there...

Net Start Spooler / You might need to do some registry hack if it doesn't allow you to do that.

Another option is that you've been pressing the Norwegian button instead of the print button.... that might also explain the issue.....

I don't know who of you two is the psychic, but now it works. And I haven't even started doing the things you suggested, yet (except those I already had done).

Could of course have something to do with my close examination of settings, drivers and such. I did some cleanup, and I see that a print that I was sure failed (without chekciong the printer) did come true.

Or it may be that the gnomes creating havoc on farms in the past, now has moved into our hardware and networks. Come to think of it, we even have a desktop environment named after then!!!!

Thanks everyone.

pibbur who will remember to install a plate of porridge next to his printer.

PS: Installation of the Netgear print utility still hangs, so my assumption that it was related to the network printing problem is probably wrong. But it's not that important anymore, since it now works over the LAN. (I will of course mercilessly track down the solution, can't let that source of unavoidable frustration grow. But not today) DS.

pib who wasted our time without buying us a beer to show how sorry he was about it....

DArtagnan said:

pib who wasted our time without buying us a beer to show how sorry he was about it….

Click to expand...

I will within a couple of years no doubt go to Sweden and Denmark for a summer vacation. I'll buy beers for both of you, if you want (assuming GG is not on yet another, ill-adviced trip to more of the misantropic wildlife areas of the world).

pibbur

Be careful what you promise

Hehe, nah, I'll let you off the hook.... THIS time.

Brother printers are cheap for a reason. I have several of them at work. I like em (super cheap) and I hate em (only reliable via usb). I gave up sticking em on the network and now only use them on out of the way computers so they can print something without walking to a proper networked printer (HP or Canon).

If you bought it locally my advice is to return it and get an HP or similar.

GothicGothicness said:

...
Another option is that you've been pressing the Norwegian button instead of the print button…. that might also explain the issue…..

Click to expand...

The Norwegian button is hidden by default, from us. I don't know where it is, but I know I may have touched it when something random and inexplicable happens.

pibbur who thinks he may have fo

Toff said:

Brother printers are cheap for a reason. I have several of them at work. I like em (super cheap) and I hate em (only reliable via usb). I gave up sticking em on the network and now only use them on out of the way computers so they can print something without walking to a proper networked printer (HP or Canon).

If you bought it locally my advice is to return it and get an HP or similar.

Click to expand...

It's too old for me to return it. Besides, it has all the time worked flawlessly over the network from every other pc I have at home. It doesn't exclude a Brother problem, but I don't think the printer is the most likely perp this time.

pibbur who still remembers fondly his honourable IBM Proprinter, and after than one, the friendly Lexmark 2070 who spoke to him in his own dialect.

Maybe attach it to a desktop via USB and just share it. If all your computers can see each other then that should work. Course the desktop will need to be on all the time tho.

I see that I hasn't been entirely clear in what I wrote, but printing over the network has worked from my other pc's, and still does. And now, without me knowing exactly why, network printing works also from my main computer (the floortop).

In other words, problem solved.

But thanks for the info. I'll take notice next time I buy a printer.

pibbur

It is obvious that the only problem was Pibbur pressing the Norwegian button......

Printers are the lowest form of technological life. I'm fairly techie, and I like to figure out how things work and how to fix them. But printers guard their secrets, and behave in mysterious and perverse ways at the most inconvenient times, for no reason that I can divine.

It was even worse int the days of DOS, before windows matured. Drivers were far less standardized, and AFAIR, you often needed separate drivers for different applications. And lots of head scratching when things didn't work, which happened.

One of the reasons I liked the proprinter was that I always got that one two work. Besides I found the tractor feed mechanism to be very stable, which was important if you had to print hundreds of letters. I especially remember that brother printers were unreliable in this aspect, so I in many cases had to start the job from the beginning.

On the bright side, I fondly remember when I had to program fonts for a brother printer in order to print optically readable invoices.

Ahhh. "The Days of DOS". Could be the title of a book, or a film. Or a post on a news forum.

pibbur who occasionally misses the noise from those printers.

Inspired by "The Days of DOS":

A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software - regardless of how insignificant," said the master.
"Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is over for today," he said.

pibbur who will post more of the same kind in the daily smile thread.