Printing problem solved!!!!

[btoneill]

Ok, so after fighting with my printer for the last 6 weeks, I finally spent some real time to solve the problem and fixed it. Posting it here incase someone else might have a similar problem at some point. That and, I have to write it down somewhere

Background:
Installed HP deskjet 845c onto OS X. All it's self tests work fine. I can print from WordPad, I can sometimes print from Acrobat, I can sometimes print a webpage, but never from IE. Printing gives no error, no nothing, just doesn't print. Also, when unable to print, also unable to create a PDF of the output. The OS sees the printer fine, as you can print to it from a PC while it's shared via Dave. Printer system log files showed lots of pretty error numbers but could find no trace of what they pointed to anywhere in apples many sites (applecare, developer, etc)

Futile attempts to fix:
Print Center Repair Tool did nothing to help
Apple's permission tool did nothing to help
Reinstalled about 20 times
Removed /Library/Printers
Tried different version of driver

Non-futile attempts to fix:
Tried above things as root, after trying them all, I could print. Logged out, logged in as myself, once again couldn't print. But atleast it's not my OS, it's just that my OS doesn't like me.

Root cauase:
under Library/Fonts in my home directory was a collection of font files of zero length. These were the byproduct of a total meltdown that symantec did on my filesystem awhile back (it zero'd out about 10% of the files on my disk, had to reinstall to fix) After removing these zero length files, I could print. The crowds rejoyced and the angels sang.


With some luck this will help someone some day who had the joy of installing symantiec, had it zero out random files on their disk, and then tried to print and couldn't. Or, maybe they just installed some random broken font.

Brian