Very strange behaviour of an HP Envy 4520 AIO printer

[sorcerer]

Client has a Dell laptop running Windows 10 and the printer is connected by wifi. The printer is only a few weeks old but it has been working perfectly well since installation until the start of this problem a couple of days ago.

The problem - it appears to be printing two documents together.

The client was attempting to print off boarding passes (from her Gmail account) for an upcoming holiday but the page looked like the print head needed cleaning so she carried that out and then printed a test page (from Printer Properties). Once printed, the page had the technical info from the printer's Windows Test Page and also some of the text from her boarding pass paperwork, which is when she asked me to have a look.

I checked the print queue and it was empty. I then cleared the Print Spooler and printed another test page with the same results. I then completely uninstalled and reinstalled the printer drivers but no change. I went on to completely uninstall any and all HP-printer-related software (such as WebPrint, HP Photo thingy and other stuff) as well as drivers, rebooted, reinstalled everything and completely started afresh.

The installation process came to a point where it wanted to go through cartridge alignment so the printer provided an alignment page, which was then to be placed on the scanner bed and scanned. However, as you'll see below, it is still printing two documents simultaneously - or at least, trying to.

I'm at a complete loss with this one - any ideas?

 

[sorcerer]

Someone's filled the paper tray with old documents to save paper?

(Sadly I'm not joking - I've seen this done!)

I do wish it was that simple but sadly not I'm afraid

 

[mraikes]

Someone's filled the paper tray with old documents to save paper?

(Sadly I'm not joking - I've seen this done!)

That was my first thought too, given that neither the alignment nor the orientation are the same. But since OP is certain that's not the case . . .it's certainly one of the more interesting printer problems.

However, that's an old, cheap, rather low quality printer. It can't make financial sense for OP's client to pay to fix it. They should buy a new printer and be done with it.

 

[NJW]

A Linux live CD will tell you if it's the printer or the laptop.

 

[~Wendy~]

Have the client use one sheet of paper in the tray at a time. Try both the manual feed first and then the normal feed. Is the printer set to print duplex maybe??

 

[sorcerer]

How do you know? Have you checked the contents of the paper tray yourself or are you accepting the client's assertion that they didn't do something daft? Or perhaps they only looked at the top side of the paper in the tray without considering that it's the bottom side that gets printed on?

I know because I took about a dozen sheets of brand new paper from the pack of printer paper next to the printer and loaded them into the paper tray myself.

 

[jmitservices]

Have you tried to do a scan directly from the printer with it disconnected from the computer?
(You have probably done this but just double checking.)

 

[nlinecomputers]

reset the printer to factory defaults.

 

[sorcerer]

Wendy - thanks. Not tried that yet but will.

jmitservices - got to confess that I haven't done that yet but will, so thanks.

nlinecomputers - Not sure how to do that. I thought un/reinstalling all printer drivers and printer software would automatically do it but obviously not, so again, thanks for a good suggestion.

One other thing I thought of was to uninstall all HP drivers and just let Windows 10 take care of it to see if that helps. I'll let you all know how I go on for future reference.

 

[nlinecomputers]

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Inkje...nter-to-default-factory-settings/td-p/4852757

 

[sorcerer]

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Inkje...nter-to-default-factory-settings/td-p/4852757

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

 

[HFultzjr]

Have a look at "Print Preview", before printing something.
Does it match what is printing?
Does it do this only on this document?
Try "printing" a blank document, or scanning one.

 

[Markverhyden]

Did you unplug the power to the printer, leave it off for a minute or two, and then test?