Hello Donf and KeepItSimple,

I am not receiving e-mail notifications so I just barely saw your posts.


I've had my old printer for a very long time. I don't know if it was new or used. My brother installed it for me.

I have never had any problems with my old printer other than I could only put one sheet of paper on the paper tray at a time (same as the newly acquired one).

The main reason I would need duplexing is when I print out healing (Reiki, homeopathy, etc) manuals from the internet. And sometimes I also like to print out manuals for things I buy at garage sales.

I will need to go through and find the part that I suspect is causing the error light to stay on. Sometimes, I think it is a short in the printer. But at the same time the sensor moves and doesn't stay in place. I wonder if the sensor wasn't already warped before it was mailed to me. It seems to have to be in just the proper position or it senses that the door is opened. It is the "door closed" sensor and not the ink cartridge sensor.


The problems I have with taking things apart and then putting them back together again is that oftentimes I can't put the screws back together in the same way. Especially long screws. Sometimes if things don't line up right, they don't work. People who invented computer hardware were smart to make parts fit in one direction only and to push things in instead of using screws. They included children and women in their hardware development.

I will go take a look at the manual now and see if I can locate the sensor that I suspect is causing the problems, and get back to you shortly.

In the service manual the "door open/cartridge sensor" is discussed on page 5-17 Table 5-1 described as No. PS204



First off, I'd like to know your how the printer is connected to the PC? Second, does the printer run a stand-alone print test? From the Printer's Properties screen, can you print the test page?

I don't know what the name of the cable is that is connected between the cable and the printer. I think it is called a data cable. Both ends have heads that have pins that get pushed in. One side to the printer and the other side to the back of the computer tower. The head that goes into the tower also has screws on the end of head. The part that goes into the printer also has clips that are pressed down.

This is what the cable says on it:
AWM E148000 Style 20276 VW-1 80 (degree symbol) c IEEE 1284 compliant LTK AWM I/II A/B 80 (degree symbol) C 30v FT1


Yes, I can print a test page as long as the sensor is in just the right position. The sensor moves when I open the door or when printing or when the ink cartridge is moved.

A test page prints by hitting the button on the door. A test page also prints by using properties on the printer menu

Click on "Question tools" which is in orange just above the question and select "Subscribe to this question". That will fix notificaton.

I looked up the 3 parts that you appear to need on HP's website and the separation pads and pick-up rollers appear to be re-designed. Substitute parts are shown for the original part numbers. At ~$55 without shipping, $250 for a printer should seem more attractive.

Does your computer have any USB ports?

"IEEE 1284 compliant " Bingo!

The IEEE 1284 specification defines several methods of implementing a high speed parallel port.

HP choose to use the "EPP" method. EPP stands for Enhanced Parallel Port. With this method, the parallel port takes in data and writes it directly to the printer's memory.

Please go to the Windows Help and type in IEEE1284 & EPP. The Windows Help should tell you how to enable the high speed port.

Don

donf:

Bingo! I don't get it. Remember, it won't do a front panel self-test because it has a broken sensor. It wants to be fed manually because of pick-up/separation problems. The port/cable is out of the picture at this time, isn't it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KeepItSimpleStupid

donf:

Bingo! I don't get it. Remember, it won't do a front panel self-test because it has a broken sensor. It wants to be fed manually because of pick-up/separation problems. The port/cable is out of the picture at this time, isn't it?

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"Yes, I can print a test page as long as the sensor is in just the right position. The sensor moves when I open the door or when printing or when the ink cartridge is moved.

A test page prints by hitting the button on the door. A test page also prints by using properties on the printer menu"

Bingo wrt the cause of the operating system's inability to talk to the port. The sensor problem needs to be corrected.

I still stand with you on the replacement of the unit.

It looks like something else is wrong with this printer and not the sensor like I had originally thought.

The green "ready" light is on but it won't print. It does print a test page though.

I think this printer was sick before the seller sent it to me.

He said it took him 15 minutes to get it to print. He told me that he had to put 50 - 100 pages in the paper try before he got it to print.

Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong with this printer?

Maybe a short somewhere?

The properties for the printer says "out of paper"

I managed to get it to print again by restarting my computer. I also cleared cookies and temporary files just to make sure it didn't have any excuses not to print.

I never had any problems with my former printer so this can get a bit frustrating at time.
I spend more time trying to figure out how to get it to print than I do printing.

Dana,

Call the supplier of the printer and tell him to pick it up. He gave you a problem child.

I too have two HP LaserJet printers one is a 5L the other a 6L. They are very problematic printers for the XP OS. From the hardware side of easy paper jams, or pulling in too much paper when printing cartridge problems. Software side, the driver can get corrupted easily or stall the printing process. These HP LaserJets major problem is the lack of transferring the pages to the printer to print and stalling the load on the PC if not transferred. Especially in XP. They are great when they work though, you get a lot of sheets with the cartridges. As for now I'm having the refuses to print when told to print but you can print a test page by pressing the test/reset button in front. I'm sure I'll solve the problem soon, I just wanted to add to this discussion.

If you have parallel printer port problems with this printer you can also try buying a Parallel port to USB adapter and use this printer as a usb printer. XP doesn't seem to like the parallel port peripherals on systems these days. Old printers, scanners etc..

System RAM/system memory has no effect on these old printers, you can have a stick of 32mb of the old SDram or a new DDR 512/gig stick. Ram only makes (system) processes faster and rely less on the hard drive for virtual/page/swap memory, the printer will print regardless. The page(s) you want to print get transferred over to the printer's memory to start printing. I don't know where that other poster came up with that information. Misinformation is the worst kind of information.

Scorpwana

Thanks for writing.

I agree with you that the software (possibly XP OS) is definitely contributing to damaging the printer. I have never had any problems with the old one until last December when my brother brought me a new flat screen. I think he had recently upgraded my computer also. Soon afterwards my printer started doing strange things like stalling and printing out an entire page of very large text (from a small part from the page I would send to the printer).

I think the software eventually totally damaged my former printer.

The current printer has been showing some similar signs as the former printer. I suspect that that the software will eventually damage it also. On a couple of occasions, the current printer has also printed out an entire page page containing only a very small part of the document I sent to the printer.

Sometimes, it remembers the last document I sent to the printer when I restart the computer.


It is only a matter of time before it will most likely damage the current printer also.

Thanks again for writing.

Dana,

Absolutely none of the problems described in the above post could be caused by the operating system.

That the printer on board flash might be buggy is true. Look on HP's site and see if there is a flash update for the printer. If there is get it.

As to the driver software, you have two options there also:

First you can get the HP Custom Driver from the HP site or you can use the generic version of the driver that comes with Windows. Even the generic version is written by HP to Microsoft's spec. Microsoft tests it and certifies it.

Extra memory on a printer allows windows to dump more data to the printer faster. Eventually when the data buffers are full, the printer sends a message to the host telling it to stop sending data.

There are three types of data transfers available to the high speed ports. Check your printer and see if it supports the IPP Bi-directional Spec. IPP is a method that allows the host to write directly to the printer's memory. That is the format that HP chose for its printers. Also implicit with any support for bi directionality from the parallel port, Nibble and Byte modes were standard formats that took advantage of the older styled 36 pin Centronics ports.

Then of course there are different schemes to pull data across the parallel port using the Centronics designed port.

The real source of bi-di problems are cheap printer cables. These cables will jumper all of the grounds together and pass one lead over to the host.

When you are trying to pass bi-directional signals over this type of cable, return signals that are meant for specific pins don't get there because it is not a pin to pin connection. You need to make sure you have an IEEE 1284 approved printer cable.

Lastly, the type of data you are sending can litterly put the printer to sleep. If you are using PCL, then there could be a fractured printer code that the printer sees and starts discarding bytes up to a mystery byte count. Once the printer clears that byte count, it magically turns on. While this is easy to find and fix in PCL, PCXL is quite another story.

I'll ask you once again to send me your print file so I can run it against some of the lab tools I used at Lexmark. I can tell you from the captured file if the file is misbehaving or if it is clean.

About two posts up, you describe a situation where the light keeps flashing and the job says printing, but nothing happens. On the driver properties look and see if there is a box you can check or un-check that will allow the printer to print while spooling.

If you would like to take this off-line until we get it to work, send me a private message.

Dana,

Here is the Link to the HP Laserjet User's manual. I'd like you to please review the "Trouble Shooting" section and see if you can match symptons.

bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/bpl03394/bpl03394.pdf

Again, I can't tell just how important a print file is in debugging your problem. Also, Please print out a menu settings page for the printer and fax it to me at (757) 490-2350.

Please at least respond to me if you need additional assistance.

Please close and remove this issue. I have received no response from the original poster to several PMs. Or Postings.

I chose the P2055dn because of auto-duplexing and the standard 128MB of RAM. I was initially disappointed by the poor print quality and noise of the printer with the factory default settings. After digging into the clunky, digital-only manual and much trial and error, I created new HP Printing Shortcuts for 1-sided and 2-sided documents with ProRes quality instead of the default FastRes quality, and I set the default Printing Shortcut to be my new 1-sided definition.See Here: HP Officejet Printer