Brian,
We had a few
of these at the college of
business do that. I believe that it was a bad formatter board, which
was
the main board where you plug everything in on.
Once they
were replaced we haven’t
had a problem with the printers that did that.
Tim Skutt, MCTS, MCSE
Information Technologist I
Eli
Broad
College
of Business
Michigan
State
University
5 Eppley
Center
East Lansing, MI 48824
Greetings
NAGers:
I
apologize for the length of this post.
We
have dozens of HP LaserJets, and have for well over a decade. Starting
around December, we have been under an evil spell, and it seems to be
spreading. Every couple weeks we get another report of the problem
from a
user who previously never had the problem. The symptoms are varied
depending on the app it occurred in, but center around the idea that
the
printer is not responsive and the computer becomes unresponsive waiting
for a
response from the printer. You don’t have to print for this to
occur, but printing or looking at printer properties often triggers the
problem. Online it has been suggested that the printer enters a
low-power
sleep mode, and then cannot wake properly. This explanation coincides
well with our experience.
A
typical report from a user would be that the user was happily using
Word when
they tried to print. Selecting File – Print, the printer that
should be displaying in the printer selection dialog is missing – the
dialog is blank. If you click on the drop-down box to choose a printer
other than the default, the other printers are listed. If you choose
one,
you can print to it fine.
Another
example: the user runs Word – Word is immediately unresponsive, and
after
a timeout, displays an error: “Microsoft Office Word: The printer has
not
yet responded, but the Microsoft Office program may be able to proceed
without
printer information. Do you want to continue to wait for the
printer?”
If the user selects Yes, Word hangs and neither the printer nor Word
ever
become responsive. If the user selects No, Word is useable, but then
behaves as in my first example for further printing operations.
Googling
reveals that many others are having this problem and have worked with
HP, as we
have. Solutions/experiences are mixed. People suggest a wide
variety of “fixes”, which work for some, others claim they don’t
work. According to posts online HP has replaced formatters and a
variety
of other fixes, none appear to be a true fix. HP has sent us a font
DIMM with
extra RAM, which they claim also updates the firmware – we’re
testing that now but others on the newsgroups have tried this and
failed.
We’ve updated firmware with help from HP – didn’t help.
Others online report having tried different driver versions – no go.
It
isn’t specific to Word, it can happen in any app from a test print to
notepad. It’s also not limited to LJ2015s: we’ve
experienced it on an LJ2300 and HP Business Inkjet something-or-other
(this is
the only non-laserjet to exhibit the problem). Online users report the
problem on a variety of HP printers. We thought it might be that these
are all on USB – but the 2300 is LPT. Online posts confirm others
get it with LPT as well. Power-cycling the printer fixes it
temporarily.
Rebooting Windows does not consistently fix it. All users are running
Windows XP. All of them are directly connected to the computer via USB
or
LPT; none of these are on the network directly with JetDirect cards.
Some
are connected to Dell desktops; some are Dell or IBM portables. The
printers have a wide variation of formatter and firmware versions, from
years
old to the present (HP gave us their latest firmware; it didn’t help).
Some users get it almost daily, all day long; others go a month without
it
happening. It is not reproducible.
The
idea we keep coming back to is that we’ve had many of these printers
for
a long time with the problem never occurring. Starting in December –
whammo. One by one it started. What has changed? Could it be
a Microsoft Update? If so why didn’t they all break at once?
A
lengthy discussion threat about this problem, with no clear resolution,
is
here:
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1235594115346+28353475&threadId=1163881
Are
any of you also experiencing this problem? I imagine there are tons of
HP
LaserJets, and especially 2015s, on campus. We seem to have it the
worst
on the 2015s, though we have several 2015s that have never had the
problem
reported.
I
truly am sorry for the length of this post, and am very appreciative
for any
advice you may have. We’re pulling out our hair on this one.
Brian
Hoort
Department
of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Computer Service
Michigan
State University
(517)
355-4701
[log in to unmask]
Skype:
brian_hoort