-1

PC: Dell precision T4300
Printer: HP LaserJet 1300

The printer connected via USB. Worked fine under Windows XP.
Now I installed Windows 7 x64 (clean install), installed PCL5 drivers (USB plug-n-play mode), after that - connected the printer, and it worked just fine, until 2 hours later user contacted me, 'cause it stopped printing.
In the Devices and Printers it shows yellow triangular exclamation mark warning sign on the printer and it says "Print error" in the queue. Restarting the task doesn't help

I tried to reinstall the driver (in all three modes) - no luck, I can't get it to print.
I reinstalled system several times - the same happens again and again. I am installing it, it works just fine, then it throws "Print error". After that I'm unable to fix it
I ran out of options.

Now I am reinstalling system again, and I don't know what to do, once it will be up.

UPDATE. Now, I have reinstalled the OS and HP LaserJet 1300 works fine! But the other printer (HP OfficeJet 8000) and the scanner (Canon LiDE60) - wouldn't work after reboot (before reboot they worked). I rebooted several times - nothing changes. Disconneting, rebooting, and connecting - doesn't help - I see 3 Unknown devices in the Drivers and Printers and HP 1300 that works! I guess it has something to do with IRQ? And, obviously, it has nothing to do with this particular printer.
UPDATE. Oh, wait no. Nothing works. Pfff

Alexander
  • 101
  • 1
  • 9
  • 2
    This belongs on superuser, not serverfault. I agree with everybody's comments, trying to fix an HP printer ANYTHING is never worth the time since the glory days of the LaserJet III. – quadruplebucky Feb 28 '14 at 21:49
  • I'd like to hear some elaboration on downvote. I'm not new on stackexchange, and this is obviously wrong downvoting. – Alexander Mar 01 '14 at 08:18
  • 1
    I'm sorry but the correct answer is "throw it away and buy a printer that's supported". Anything else is just wasting your own time and that of the people who are presumably waiting for a fix so they can use it. – Rob Moir Mar 01 '14 at 11:51
  • Even [this link](http://meta.serverfault.com/q/4111) provided by `closed as off-topic` banner proves, that my quiestion does not falls into off-topic category, but nobody cares. Even if this belongs to the superuser, it should be flagged for migration, but not closed. It appears that the community here is a more like monkey-pushing-buttons style, opposed to StackOverflow. – Alexander Apr 03 '14 at 13:10

4 Answers4

7

HP has discontinued the 1300 LaserJet line of printers.

This tells me the printer in question is old and quite possibly has a physical fault of some sort.

I would say that troubleshooting an old, $92 printer is not a good use of anyone's time, so replace it and move on. Preferably with a better/newer model, but Amazon apparently has new ones (1300 LaserJets) available for $92, if you guys are married to that specific printer for some reason.

HopelessN00b
  • 53,385
  • 32
  • 133
  • 208
  • Thanks for the reply! I'm aware that this is a very old printer, and replacing it with some new model will solve the problem for sure. However, right now, I cannot buy a new one, and it's not my desicion to make. I'm just looking for some type of workaround, that will allow user to continue use it, until the replacement will come. I completely agree, that this is a driver issue, but I'm prepared to look deeper into it, so the problem could be solved. – Alexander Feb 28 '14 at 17:06
  • And they [do offer the drivers for Windows 7 x64](http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdHome?sp4ts.oid=238322&ac.admitted=1393607266304.876444892.199480143). Only it's not working properly – Alexander Feb 28 '14 at 17:08
  • @Alexander Do what you gotta do, but from a technical perspective, if you're running the latest drivers for this printer and it keeps crapping out, you're pretty low on options. You could try cleaning the printer on the off chance the print heads are gunked up, or some build-up of dirt is impacting the mechanical action, but beyond that, if your hardware has a physical defect or fault, you replace it. You can run diagnostics on the printer to try to determine what, precisely is wrong with it, but are you really going to replace a part on a $92 printer?? Seems vastly better to get a new one. – HopelessN00b Feb 28 '14 at 17:13
  • I don't think this is a hardware problem, since it printing just fine, when just installed – Alexander Feb 28 '14 at 17:16
  • @Alexander Don't be so sure. I've got about a half dozen hard drives that work for a few minutes after boot up, and then die. But let's say you're right, and it's not a hardware problem. It's a driver problem... what can you do about that? It's a discontinued product, so HP's not gonna be updating the drivers any time soon. You're not going to be able to get help from support, so... you really gonna hack around in the drivers yourself to try to find and correct the problem? As I said, do what you gotta do, but any time you invest in this problem is a waste. – HopelessN00b Feb 28 '14 at 17:22
  • @Alexander We ran into the same issue with issue with the HP 1100 and 1200 series. The driver is not stable and it crashes the windows PrintSpooler service. even HUPing the service doesn't fix the problem sometimes. – tegbains Feb 28 '14 at 23:15
7

HopelessN00b has the right answer - you are wasting your time trying to make an already marginal printer (get it?) when it was new circa 2004-ish work ten years later. I have been down this path, against my wishes I might add, and trust me it leads nowhere.

Buuuttt... if you are determined to make this work try the following:

  1. Download the most recent supported driver from HP - it looks like your match is the HP Universal Print Driver PCL5 5.7.0.16448.
  2. Install the printer using Windows Printer Management MMC instead of whatever silly executable HP provides.
  3. Verify that you can successfully print a Windows Printer test page.
  4. Begin printing things in ever more complexity. Start with ASCI text files, then move to Word documents and so on. See if you can reproduce the error condition. If you cannot, ask the user to keep track of everything they print by writing it down. You're trying to find whatever condition causes the printer to puke.

Were you able to reproduce the condition that causes the printer to stop working repeatably? Hooray. You get to move on. No? Give up. At this point you are just guessing and that is just a waste of time.

  1. Restart the print spooler. Did that fix it? If so, it is probably a driver issue. Contact HP support and maybe they will be nice to you and provide you with an another driver that works. If HP does not or cannot help you do something really ugly like have a script monitor and restart the print spooler.
  2. Go check the Event Logs (Microsoft-Windows-PrintService/Admin) for something interesting.
  3. Nothing useful in the Event Logs, attach ProcMon to the spooler process and run through the condition that that causes the printer to stop working. Sift through ProcMon. If you are lucky you can find something that points you back to underlying cause. This can be maddeningly obtuse, such as "permissions error" (Windows tried to install the wrong "bit-ness" driver), a missing font in one particular Word document, a PCL command that causes the driver to crash, the wrong print processor detected, an issue with GDI and a thousand other things. Have fun!

...or you could just buy a new printer

(I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm really just trying to look out for you here.)

Community
  • 1
0

Here is a left-field response to the situation: install Windows XP on VirtualBox, give the USB connection to VirtualBox and install the printer on XP, then share the printer from XP so the Win7 system can print to it as a network printer.

It isn't a pretty solution, but as it is temporary, it might be what you need.

Alderin
  • 63
  • 1
  • 1
  • 8
0

Here is what worked for me:
1. I disconnected both printers and scanner.
2. Rebooted the PC
3. Connected all devices again
Everything works fine now.
All you need to do - just disconnect devices before rebooting, and connect them again after.

P.S. I'm sursrised how many votes got "answers" that suggested to run away from the problem (hard to count them as answers, actually). It is saying something about people who posted it, as well as people who voted for it.
Also, bear in mind, that buying a new printer wouldn't solve anything, 'cause it's obviuos now, that the problem was in the workstation.

Alexander
  • 101
  • 1
  • 9