Printer Problem-Cannot Print

My Sister's machine has acquired a problem accessing either her HP DeskJet or her Brother Multi Function printer. She is running Windows XP on a Pentium III machine with 512 mb RAM. When she goes to print, she gets a "print failure" notice after the machine sits for about 3 minutes.

I checked her Control Panel, and both printers are listed.

Both of her printers work fine on my machine which uses Windows XP also.

Are there further tests that I can perform to try to narrow down the cause of this problem?

V/R,

Mike

 

Does it fail with any application (ie word, webpage, txt file..)?
Are the printers shared on a network or did u just plugged them on ur comp to try?
What socket do they use on the comp?

Right click on the printer icon > propreties > "print test page" button

have u tried to just reinstall them : delete the printer and reinstal with manufacturer driver or xp driver (try both). Check for updated drivers as well.

 

Not_a_quitter,

To answer your questions:

Does it fail with any application (ie word, webpage, txt file..)?-It fails with all applications, including Command Prompt as directed by Microsoft. It's a strange fail-it takes about 3 min to decide it's failing.

Are the printers shared on a network or did u just plugged them on ur comp to try?-No network. Printer plugged in directly to computer.

What socket do they use on the comp?-Don't understand this question.

Right click on the printer icon > propreties > "print test page" button-Test page failed. Will try again in the AM.

have u tried to just reinstall them : delete the printer and reinstal with manufacturer driver or xp driver (try both). Check for updated drivers as well.-no luck first time; will try this again in the AM.

Thanks for your help on this-it's got me quite confused.

V/R,

Mike

 

My mistake. I'm not english. I meant port.

[Despite "socket" was only an application level term to me, someone used that word to talk about his outside firewire port and I've been confirmed it was the right term to use. So I thought it could be a common use. Obviously not! lol . Sorry.]

can u print in safe mode?

Check the ports used by the printers in device manager and see if it shows a conflict.

 

Thanks again for your reply. Don't worry about wrong words-I am not that computer literate.

Let's see-ports: The printer is connected via a USB port, runs on LPT-1 port on the machine, and the Device Manager shows no conflict.

I will try to print in SAFE mode the next time I go to my sister's house.

V/R,

Mike

 

Pete,

OK. Appreciate the clarification. My sister has just one printer physically installed at this time, and it uses the USB connection.

You and not_a_quitter have given me a bunch of stuff to do. I will report results as soon as I can. Thanks to both of you.

V/R,

Mike

 

It sounds like Pete's using the classic start menu. So.... In case you're using the default XP menu, you have to open the control panel, click "printers and other hardware ", then "printers and faxes ", then right click on your printer and choose properties and then the ports tab.

I'm not trying to create confusion here but I thought I'd mention this just in case.

 

Hello all,

Thanks to all your help, the problem is fixed. Seems that her system is very picky as to how things are installed. I ended up uninstalling both printers and religiously following installation processes, even to point of which plug to insert first on a turned off system! After 2 reinstalls, got things to work.

Again, appreciate the help and patience of this group.

V/R,

Mike