Weird on-going printer issues

[Velvis]

Client has had issues with stuff getting stuck in the print queue over the past 6 months or so. The other day the printer connected via USB stopped being detected and only showed as a scanner. (It was a 8 year old HP all-in-one.) I figured it was junk and worth replacing with an HP 8130e all in one.

I set it up, printed a test page, and printed a word doc without issue.

After I left the client went to print a large excel list (about 20 pages) and it printed one page and then the print spooler just says error.

I cleared the queue as well as the temp files in the spool directory and restarted the computer.

But anything I try to print doesn't (including a test page) and the queue eventually says error.

Any ideas what might be going on? and is there a way to get more details than just "error"?

 

[ThatPlace928]

Maybe you need to update the printer drivers and remove the old printers from the list, then select the new one as default printer, even though there are no other printers after removal?

 

[timeshifter]

I cleared the queue as well as the temp files in the spool directory and restarted the computer.

did you stop the spooler before you did that?

net stop spooler

 

[Velvis]

did you stop the spooler before you did that?

net stop spooler

Yes.

 

[Velvis]

Maybe you need to update the printer drivers and remove the old printers from the list, then select the new one as default printer, even though there are no other printers after removal?

I did delete the old printer and uninstalled the HP software before install of the new one.

 

[Velvis]

I am trying to update the firmware of the printer, and the HP firmware utility finds the printer but indicates that it is "Busy"

It seems like the printer is hung up (I am not onsite, and no one is in the office), so I don't know if the printer display is indicating anything.
I guess it is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[Velvis]

Follow up question: the excel doc the client tried to print only printed a single page before it stopped, but it was page 3 not page 1.
Any ideas what would cause that?

 

[timeshifter]

It prints in reverse order so when you pick up the stack of pages from the printer, pages 1 is on top and so on.

 

[Velvis]

It prints in reverse order so when you pick up the stack of pages from the printer, pages 1 is on top and so on.

Ah, I didn't think of that. Thank you.

 

[lan101]

Maybe get lucky with running the windows all in one tool from the tweaking.com site.

I've had that resolve some weird things before but it's literally a flip of a coin if it fixes it or not.