Why can't we print from word processing software?

[broc]

I have installed a number of HP Laserjet P2015n printers on our network this week. We use a Server 2003 print server with Pcounter software to manage the printers with XP clients running MS Office 2003. Both the server & clients are up-to-date with MS service updates.

 

During testing using more than one client PC, we have discovered some issues where some print jobs work & others don't, for example:

 

What works:

 

Notepad, MS Publisher, MS Powerpoint, MS Excel(sometimes), Adobe Acrobat, Windows Picture Printing Wizard, printing from IE7

 

What doesn't work:

 

MS Word, MS Wordpad, Open Office Writer

 

This behaviour seems to happen after I install the second & subsequent 2015n printers, working fine for the first. Meanwhile all of the other printers (a mix of HP, Kyocera & DELL) on the server continue to work normally.

 

Everything prints when locally attaching the printers to client PCs via USB

 

I have downloaded & tried the latest HP PCL5 & PCL6 drivers, carefully removing all of the drivers & registry settings in between & rebooting the server just to make sure.

 

I have tried with & without Pcounter, which redirects the printer port.

 

I have tried Standard TCP/IP port as well as HP Standard TCP/IP port.

 

The printers are all set up in exactly the same way using static TCP/IP addresses. According to the System event records the job is sent to the printer and appears to print, this is echoed by Pcounter accounting. We don't see any error events logged on either the server or client PCs.

 

At the printer end, when a failing job is sent the 'data' LED blinks just once, suggesting some data has been sent. A successful job causes the LED to 'blink' repeatedly as data is received.

 

My next step is to take a PC with a vanilla XP & Office 2003 install & try that to see if it could be anything else on the client PC. After that I may need to set up another print server with just these P2015n printers.

 

Has anyone else any better suggestions?

[steve]

Are you printing on A4 paper?

 

Our printers are set to delete jobs that aren't the correct paper size.

[Michael]

I have a P2015n at home and experience non of the problems you describe.

 

I'm using it connected via Ethernet on my workstation running XP SP2. When installing the driver, it installs both the PCL5 and PCL6 driver. I would recommend you use the PCL5 printer only and delete the PCL6 printer.

 

I would also recommend you reset the printer to its defaults, in case something has been changed. Other than this, I think you've covered everything else.

[elsiegee40]

As steve suggests, double check what paper size the word processors are defaulting too. Letter size is the usual cause of problems here.

[bossman]

Hi Broc,

We have had a small but annoying problem not with the 2015ns but with 4250ns something tells me it is the either drivers becoming corrupted or a Microsoft update problem to do with how the print spooler handles the request from the printer.

The problem we are having BTW is that the documents are coming out last page first or if collated the first page then the last and so forth.

Unfortunately the only solution I have found is to use an older driver and clean off the server and clients any trace of the newer drivers.

Until one of the big boys either HP or Microsoft admit there is a problem then I feel we are very much in the dark.

[broc]

Everything is set up for A4, we have since discovered that a blank A4 page will 'print' from word, as will some old documents that are unmodified. I forgot to mention that a windows test page always prints too.

 

We did have one 2015n printer working months ago, I installed a second just before the holiday and planned upon getting the remainder installed this week.

 

Of course like many folks I used the holiday period to apply a load of service to our servers & clients, so bossmans suggestion that there may be some service related issues is an interesting line of investigation too.

[rotsak]

First of all you have to reallocate printers in the classrooms using management console and reboot printers.

Usually it solves a problem.

[broc]

Well,

 

As I suspected, it doesn't look like anything on the client PC. I unpacked a brand-new PC this morning, ran setup, added it to the domain & installed Office 2003 without doing any service updates. I then tried to send a Word document to the printer, no joy.