Black bars across Office 2003 print outs

[indie]

I've got a real odd problem here, when our users are printing out from a room that runs Windows XP Pro SP2 32bit, Office 2003 SP3 to a HP 2200 laser printer they get big black bars across the page wherever there are any images or word art (Word, Powerpoint and Excel).

I've gone to a machine that runs XP Pro x64 SP2 and Office 2003 SP3 and printed to the same printer (same printer share just a 64bit driver) and there are no bars.

If they print to the HP 5500 colour laser they got no bars either.

Any ideas anyone?

[Michael]

I think you've isolated the problem really well. It looks like there's a 32bit driver problem. I'd recommend you download the latest 32bit driver for your printer.

[crc-ict]

I would say the printer is running out of memory and isn't able to render the images, so it prints black. Used to happen a lot years ago, but not seen it for ages.

Don't know what the solution is, though, other than get a printer with more memory, or upgrade the memory if you can.

[m25man]

All very well diagnosed, every one valid.
I have one comment to add though, there is a well known issue with the Jetdirect 610n that were normally supplied in these.
So much so that HP replaced any faulty ones with a 620 if they failed under warranty without question.

IF you have a 610 Jetdirect I would put my money on that being your problem.

Be careful as there are a load of dodgy ones floating around on EBay.

If your 610 dies replace it with a 620.

HP knew about this and buried it.

[indie]

Thanks for the replies guys...

We're already running the latest version of the HP Universal driver, so I can't update that.

Most of the JetDirect cards in the printers failed years ago (have had the 2200's for 6 years now) and have been replaced with the 620n's.

The possibility of the printer running out of memory doesn't explain why I can print the document from a 64bit machine and it works but not from a 32bit machine. However, I've got some memory that will fit the printer so I'll stick it in one of them and see.

Attached is a print out to show you exactly what's happening, all I did was make a new powerpoint (this time in Powerpoint 2007) and add a chart, where the chart is I get the black bar.

[indie]

SORTED!

Changed the driver to the PCL6 version instead of PCL5 and it works fine.

However I'm sure when I installed the latest Universal Driver it defaulted to PCL6 and it caused problems so I put it to PCL5 for a reason... can't remember why though :P

Will see how it goes for the rest of the day!