blank pages from HP printer

My HP photosmart printer will only print out blank pages. Installed new cartridges. Did mechanical/electronic reset. un-installed and re-installed drivers and software includes deleteing registry PID. Will print test page calibration page and diagnostic test okay. did printhead cleaning still only blank pages. Now for this I decided to add printer in control panel printer and faxes. I randomly picked Hp office jet 350 to add. Windows installed the drivers on the usb DOT4_001 port, which is the same port my 7350 uses. This fictional printer works just fine as the default printer( except will not print color but I do not know if this a color printer). Tried making 7350 default printer again blank pages only come out. Back to officejet as default, works fine. I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO TRY. HP support has suggested many fixes but none work. Any clues.

Dennis

 

densaw--Just thinking outloud

Don't understand that. Do you mean your 7350 was not in Control Panel|Printers and Faxes already?
Did you uninstall the 7350 printer and try to reinstall it using the CD that came with the printer?
Have you tried for an answer here
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...s&dlc=en&submit.y=7&submit.x=10&lang=en&cc=us
Is your 7350 still within the one year warranty?

 

The right set of drivers does not work. The wrong set of drivers does work. I am with Welshjim about reinstalling, but not only reinstalling, uninstalling everything related to printers first.

In the printers folder, right-click on the printers and select delete. Go to Add/Remove programs, you should be able to remove the HP program there. In Add/Remove programs look for anything related to old/previous printers and remove those. Go through the Start > Programs list (the HP program/utilities should be gone) and look for programs related to old printers, if there are any, find their uninstall program (it may be in the programs folder) and uninstall it. Once everything is uninstalled, shutdown, disconnect the printer, startup and run the HP drivers disk. I would shutdown again before connecting printer.

I run Win 98SE and only connect or disconnect USB hardware with the machine shutdown. I would also do this with Win ME and 2000 also. Win XP is more USB friendly.

Something else to try is removing the USB Controllers in Device Manager and make Windows reinstall them. Or...look for updated motherboard/chipset drivers. Some VIA chipsets require a special update program for the USB Controller drivers.

Matt

 

blank pages from HP printer

First thanks for replies. Yes the 7350 did appear in control panel. this printer is 2 years old and has worked fine until 3 days ago. I did not make any changes in hardware or software on my computer.I have done a complete and I do mean complete uninstall and reinstall. I have been in contact with HP support and tried all their suggestions, which were many and nothing worked. Yes you are correct the wrong driver that I installed makes the printer print and the correct driver does not.

 

Blank pages from HP printer(solution)

In case anyone interested. I noticed that printer drivers for my Visioneer 9220 scanner were not listed in control panel printers and faxes. I completely uninstalled the scanner and then uninstalled and reinstalled HP printer again. This time the printer works fine. Reinstalled scanner and although printer drivers for scanner are still not listed( I recieved an error during installation of scanner stating they did not install) the printer still works. Scanner works also.

I still do not know what caused this to happen or why exactly everything now works. But since this is Microsoft Windows I guess I should not try to understand.

 

densaw--thanks for telling us what the solution was.
I also have an HP printer and the Visioneer 9220. Thank heaven no such problems as you had, but when I open Control Panel|Printers and Faxes both the HP printer and a "PaperPort Color" device (with a printer icon) are shown. I have no idea what the PaperPort Color is (Paper Port is the software for the Visioneer), but when I right clicked on it and then Properties, I was told "The Paper Port Color Printer Driver" was not installed and did I want to install it. I clicked No and did not pursue the matter.
It would seem that PaperPort somehow gets involved in the printing business which could have caused your problem.

 

blank pages from hp printer ... another one

I have a HP PSC 2179 All-In-One printer and I'm experiencing a problem with this printer that exhibits EXACTLY the same symptoms as described here. I too had tried HP support and deinstalling / reinstalling the drivers (multiple times). I've even just tried installing the driver for the HP Office Jet 350 (as mentioned above) and get the same results (i.e. that prints okay and in black and white).

My issue is that I don't have (and have never had) a scanner installed on this system (other than the one in the HP PSC device itself), so I can't remove any Visioneer drivers as I don't have any

Does anyone have any suggestions that I could try so that I can get my printer working again, please?

 

MrG (welcome to the BBS)
The problem was probably caused by "shared" (or different versions) of driver files. I think you will need to look for a clash with other drivers, not necessarily those of a scanner, but those related to the printer (and as I said, previous printers).

One thing I think you could try is to uninstall the printer/drivers in Safe Mode.

Matt
PS Thanks to densaw for letting us know how it was solved. Hope it scores another winner for somebody else.

 

Matt

Thanks for the suggestion. I've now tried uninstalling the drivers in safe mode, and then re-installing them again and it's not made any difference. I looked to see what else there might be to conflict and noticed a "Microsoft Office Document Image Writer" driver so decided to de-install MS-Office (I use StarOffice most of the time anyway. However, again, this has made no difference. I guess I'll keep looking to see if there's anything else that might be conflicting, but I'm starting to lose confidence that I'm going to get this resolved now (at least, without a complete re-install of Windows, which I really don't want to do).

If I do resolve this (or if HP manage to come back to me on the support call I logged with them last week) then I'll post the solution here.

Cheers
Dave

 

some more interesting (or unexpected) facts ...

There are some other odd results that might help determine where the issue is here.

The printer (HP PSC 2179) is locally attached to a Windows PC via USB (as per densaw's config above). I also have it shared out over my internal network (although problem is still there when I haven't shared it at all) to other PCs. When trying to print over the network from another Windows PC I still just get the blank page (as one might expect).

However, when I print to this share from a Linux PC (i.e. still via the Windows PC it's connected directly to) everything works fine ... all print (including colour, formatting etc.) comes out exactly as I would expect it to on a working PC.

What I don't know is ... what's the difference bewteen the way Linux and Windows clients on a network send print jobs to a shared printer that's hosted on a Windows XP PC?

Do you think that being able to answer this question will get me any nearer to figuring out which driver is in conflict?

Dave

 

Just some ideas.
1) Any reason why you chose the HP 350? I know nothing about its specs. Maybe you should pick a newer more modern printer (like the 7450 or 7770) for which to download drivers.
2) Open Control Panel|Printers and Faxes. Right click on your HP Printer|Advanced tab. Click on New Driver. Follow the instructions in the Driver Installation Wizard.
3) Or in Device Manager|Hardware|click + in front of the DOT4 listing(s), Right click|Properties|Driver Tab|Play with the various options including RollBack Driver. You can also see from Driver Details how the phony printer's drivers differ from those of the "real" printer's.
Worst that could happen is that you would have reinstall the 7350 again. I understand when you last did reinstall it, you installed the drivers from the CD first before plugging in the printer. I think that is the suggested sequence.

 

Linux will be using it's own set of drivers to run the printer, so that pretty much agrees that the problem is with the Win XP drivers. The other Win XP computers have taken their drivers from the machine that it is attached to, that's why all the Win XP machines act the same...so, if and when you solve it (no, just when you solve it ), you will probably need to reinstall new drivers on all the other Win XP machines as well. In fact, if you are troubleshooting the problem, it would be best to take it offline from the network
...mmmm...because the printer may actually be "shared ", it may not be allowing you to change the necessary files. Unfortunately, I don't have enough experience with Win XP networks to say (turn off sharing??).

"Phony drivers "...makes me wonder if Windows has installed what it thinks are the best drivers at some stage and left an incorrect version of one of the driver files.

Just some thoughts.
Matt

 

You folks are certainly and surely not alone here.

I have an XP Pro and two 98SE machines plugged into a Router. Making a very nice Local Area Network.

I have a HP 5550 USB priinter plugged into this XP Pro machine and HAD it set to be shared by two 98SE machines.

In morning it would work fine. In the afternoon, forget it. Especially if I had shutdown and/or restarted this XP Pro machine. Or if I did restart this machine and restarted the 98 machine(s) all was OK. If I printed what I am thinking about that, I would surely be kicked off of this BBS.

Now I go out get an HP Deskjst 5850 networkable printer. Plugged it into the Router and then installed the drivers for it on each machine. YIPPEE ! NO MORE SHARING ! All works just great. At least as long as I do not forget to leave the Printer powered at all times.

So now I go out and buy an HP Scanjet 3970 USB Scanner and set it up on this XP Pro machine ( or tried to anyway ). Neither the USB Printer or the Scanner would work properly. Took the Scanner and installed it on the ANCIENT 98SE machine ( goes all the way back to Win95 or earlier in age ) and all works just fine.

Even though I really do not need it I would like to find a Networkable Scanner to plug into the Router. But I believe it would come under the heading of " Not Cost effective." ( I THINK that is it )

Now. Do I put the blame for the problems on XP, the HP hardware ( or drivers for it ) or the operator ? Or as I have said MANY TIMES, a combination of them ? In all the years I have been working with these Personal Computers I have yet to see ANYTHING that works alone. The PC itself may be standing alone on the Desktop. But inside is a whole different story.

But overall I am finding new hardware to be VERY, VERY, FUSSY.

BillyBob

 

Thanks to mattman, billybob and welshjim for your suggestions.

Sorry it's been a while before I got back to you but we've been away for a few days.

I've tried all of the suggestions above, but I can't seem to force the driver to change. I can de-install / reinstall but something is obviously left around between the two and things still fail to work successfully. In the meantime, I've found that the HP Deskjet 660C driver makes the printer work successfully, and in colour, but it looks to be at a lower resolution than the printer's capable of.

I think I'll stick with this for the next couple of weeks and keep checking the various BBSs and HP support pages for anyone that manages to find out the root cause for this issue and fix it (well, I can but hope.

 

You have a conflict with DEP. To solve it you can do one ot these things:

1) Disable DEP removing the '/NoExecute=OptIn' from boot.ini
2) System - Advanced - DEP - Activate DEP only for essential Windows Progams and Services
3) I suppose that checking 'Activate DEP for all programs and services except those selected' and including the HP driver in the list should also work.

My printer doesn't work in (3) by default (¡.e. the printer driver not in the exemption list). I have tested (1) (not recommended) and (2) and they work, and I guess (3) should also work if you include in the exemption list the right HP program, but I have not bothered to test it.

This explains why the printer stopped working if you had not installed any new programs. You probably changed the DEP settings.

Please excuse me if the messages are not exactly the same. My Windows XP is in Spanish and I don't have access to an English version.

Regards.

Rafa.

 

Problem solved - disabled DEP for all but essential Windows programs

FANTASTIC!! ... thanks to Rafa, I've disabled DEP (for all but essential Windows programs ... Rafa's option 2 above), rebooted my system and the printer now works fine.

I had almost given up hope of ever resolving this (I'd been using a 2nd printer), but a HUGE thanks goes to Rafa for this suggestion.

Cheers
Dave

PS. Forgive the slow response to your recommendation, but I've only just returned from holiday (in Spain.

 

Far out!!
Wonder if disabling DEP has any downside for other PC functions?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352