Windows printing issue

Post #315,465 by rcareaga 10/11/09 5:10:25 PM Reply	Windows printing issue The spousette is briefly in town (first time in almost a fortnight) and is shortly to depart again to the southern reaches of our elongated state to deal with her ailing papa. Since she has a living to earn I have provided her with a modern Mac laptop that can don the filthy and tattered raiments of Redmond at need, in this instance Windows XP. I have also provided her (a while back) with a printer, yclept "HP DeskJet 4260." There's also a Samsung laser printer attached, but she does not propose to take this one on the road. She has predictably mislaid the CD-ROM that came with the inkjet, so I downloaded the latest and greatest driver from HP and did the whole installation routine, whereupon Windex said "Yessir, all present and accounted for, ready to print!" Trouble is, any application I summon up, the printer churns and yields...a blank page. When the laptop is booted into Leopard, nichto problemo: nice black output. The Samsung, the driver for which was also purportedly installed this morning, is merely unrecognized altogether, but Windex invites me to accompany it online in a quest for drivers, shortly thereafter chirping "Sorry! Can't find!" Since L doesn't plan to go on the road with a laser printer strapped to her back, this is a complication of lesser moment, although certainly vexatious in its way. I'll be burrowing after my own solutions, of course, but have any of ye veterans of the Windex wars encountered, or heard the like? Printer not otherwise functionally disabled (as evidenced by normal output from a proper OS) pretends to print under Windex but yields perfectly blank output? I'd be most grateful to learn of a shortcut through the maze. cordially,
Post #315,466 by Another Scott 10/11/09 6:07:42 PM Reply	Solution to a similar problem. Maybe this will help? http://www.fixyourow...rums/inkjet/24623 Scroll down to longstride's solution. HTH. Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,469 by rcareaga 10/11/09 7:07:51 PM Reply	that sounded so promising... I was prepared to have your baby in the event it worked, provided only a certain latitude in the senses of "have" and "baby" might be negotiated. Un-negotiable, alas, was the sense of "help" in the event. The recommended procedure came a-cropper, I grieve to report. Anyone else care to suggest something in exchange for artfully hedged intimations of services of a personal nature? seductively,
Post #315,470 by Another Scott 10/11/09 7:21:38 PM Reply	Ack! :-) HP has some suggestions (some seem non-applicable), but maybe something here would work. http://h10025.www1.h...n&product=2510771 Maybe try the Workaround at the end - try a HP990C printer driver. Good luck! Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,474 by boxley 10/11/09 8:20:49 PM Reply	when I used to have issues like that I would select a generic deskjet driver that usally worked
Post #315,476 by rcareaga 10/11/09 9:16:43 PM Reply	Re: when I used to have issues like that Care to steer me toward a source of Windex "generic" printer drivers? cordilly,
Post #315,478 by Another Scott 10/11/09 9:34:43 PM Reply	Like so... Your version of Windows should have the driver for the stardard HP inkjet printer built in. You shouldn't need to download one. (This is under Windows 2000 - it's a little different under XP.): Start -> Settings -> Printers -> Add Printer Next (Assuming it's attached directly to the XP machine) Local Printer radio button, Next Use the following printer port - USB? You'll then get a list of printers by brand. Select HP on the left side, then one of the HP DeskJet machines (like the DJ990C if it's listed). Next and so forth. HTH a bit. Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,484 by rcareaga 10/11/09 11:36:51 PM Reply	Ah, but it thinks it has the proper driver ...and goes through the whole print routine smiling cheerfully, except that the output page is blank. Which doesn't work for us. vordially,
Post #315,485 by Another Scott 10/12/09 12:09:58 AM Reply	Sorry. One more pointer. Did you uncheck the "Let Windows detect plug-and-play printers" during that set of instructions before? No guarantee that it would work (as USB is pretty-much always plug-and-play). I think if you try to install different drivers for the printer, Winders may do an end-run around the different drivers as soon as you plug the printer in. But, there are ways to try to install a different driver for the printer. Let's assume you have the printer connected and it has gone through an installation cycle. Again, this is for Windows2000 but should be similar for you: Do Start -> Settings -> Printers Click with the Right mouse button on the HP printer icon. Select "Properties" Click on the Advanced tab Click on the "New Driver..." button. Next Select HP on the left, and a DeskJet driver on the right that you want to try. Continue with the steps. With luck, something will stick and work properly. If you've already effectively done this, then, well... :-( Another thing that might be worth trying is to install ghostscript and print through it (e.g. have her print to a PostScript file and then use ghostscript to dump it to a printer). It can be a hassle to set up, but might be a software solution. ghostscript is a PS rasterizer with lots of nice features - http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ gsview is a Windows graphical front-end for ghostscript - http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/ Both are free. I hope this helps a little. I fear, though, that there isn't a real, non-kludgey, solution other than perhaps running Winders in a virtual machine on a Mac. :-( Unless you're willing to try a different physical printer. (I've had good luck with Canon inkjets on OSX and Winders.) Good luck. Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,514 by rcareaga 10/12/09 2:43:07 PM Reply	Re: Sorry. One more pointer. Spouse, computer and printer are leaving for the Southland in a few hours, so her provisional solution is to save her documents as PDF using a nifty little Windows-only (natch, since the Mac OS can do this w/out add-ons) and then reboot into Mac mode and batch-print. Inelegant, but effective. I'll puzzle out the recalcitrant print issues when she returns at week's end (the spouse and her sibs are taking shifts of 4-5 days at a time at the irascible parent's hospital bedside. He is exceedingly resentful that his preference for no amputation was overridden, and arguments that had it not been he'd be in no position today to resent anything cut no mustard. But this is a topic for another forum). Thanks for assistance to date. cordially,
Post #315,518 by SpiceWare 10/12/09 3:58:49 PM Reply	not a bad idea running Winders in a virtual machine on a Mac. Have the Mac share the printer and install Bonjour in the VM http://support.apple...njour_for_Windows I did this with my XP session under Parallels. The Coherence feature is slick - Windows programs appear in Finder alongside of OS X programs. Combine Coherence with WindowBlinds and the XP programs look like OS X programs http://www.flickr.co...14@N00/344568665/ http://www.stardock....cts/windowblinds/
Post #315,480 by Andrew Grygus 10/11/09 10:09:51 PM Reply	When will people catch on? HP makes crap. Everything they make is crap.- but nothing is so crappy as their drivers. They have more bugs than the average ant farm - and HP doesn't fix them because they just plain doesn't care. They know you're going to buy their printers whether they work or not. If the device doesn't work they know you'll blame yourself, or your computer, or Microsoft. Don't ever lose the CD that comes with an HP device. The "updated" drivers you can download often won't even install, never mind actually work.

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