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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Can't Print In Tiger On Laptops

spaceman23 - May 29, 2005 - 10:53 am

I have 2 laptops (iBook 700 & Powerbook 1.5/12") that both have Tiger 4.1 installed. Neither can print to shared printers. The print dialog box comes up but the print button does not work. Neither does hitting enter. The only thing I can do is cancel out of the job. They are both using a wireless connection via a USRobotics router that assigns DHCP addresses. Has anyone else had this problem and how did you fix it? Thanks.

vinko - May 29, 2005 - 11:51 am

Dear Jeff,

My name is Vinko and I will attempt to answer your question.

There could be a few different things that may be wrong. What is the brand and model of the Printer? How is this Printer being "shared"? Is it connected to a Windwos or Mac then shared?

One issue may be that the driver within Mac OS 10.4 is not compatible. For some printer manufacture users have to downgrade to older print drivers for the printer to work with the Mac under Mac OS 10.4.

I hope this helps.

-- Vinko

Thank you for choosing macosx.com

spaceman23 - May 29, 2005 - 12:09 pm

HP 2355 all-in-one, hp Deskjet 9600 (both via USB on a Mac Mini Running Tiger 4.1) and HP 970 via HP Jetdirect 500 3 port printer sharing device over ethernet. I can print from the Mac Mini fine which is directly connected via USB to other 2 printers.

vinko - May 30, 2005 - 2:59 am

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for your reply.

Let's first get one of the 2 printers connected to your Mac Mini working with your other Macs.

I presume you have already turned on Print Sharing on your Mac Mini. If you have not, you can follow the folowing steps to do so:

1. Open your System Preferences
2. Go to the Printer & Fax Preferences
3. Ensure that the Sharing panel is in focused
4. Check both HP 2355 and DeskJet 9600

Now you want to make sure that "Print Sharing" is not being blocked by your Mac Mini's internal Mac OS X Firewall. To verify this, please follow the following steps:

1. Open your System Preferences
2. Go to the Sharing Preferences
3. Ensure that the Services panel is in focused
4. Check the "Printer Sharing" item in the list
5. Change your focus to the Firewall panel
6. If the Firewalll is on (indicated by either the label near the top of the panel saying "Firewall On" or the label of the button underneath it saying "Stop"), then you will want to continue next step, otherwise you're done
7. Ensure that the "Print Sharing" item is checked. You should not have a way to uncheck this item, and it should be check automatically if you check the corresponding item in the Services panel.

Now from one of your portable (iBook or PowerBook) try adding a printer.

1. Open the System Preferences
2. Go to the Print & Fax Preferences
3. Ensure that the Printing panel is in focus
4. If there are currently any printers added, highligh each and then click on the "-" icon near the bottom of the list to remove it.
5. Click on the "+" icon to add a new Printer. This should open Printer Setup Utility.
6. You should see a list of available printers, of which you should see the HP 2355 and Deskjet 9600 connected to your Mac Mini.

If not you may want to try connecting one of the portable Mac to the USRobotics router via physical wire to see if that helps.

Otherwise the USRobotics, may be have a setting which is blocking the Print Sharing ports that Apple is using. If the latter is the case, you will need to find the Print Sharing ports that Apple uses then open them up on your USRobotics router's setting.

At the moment I do not have the necessary port information for you. Why don't you try the above suggestion and see if you need these ports information.

I hope this helps.

-- Vinko

Thank you for choosing macosx.com

spaceman23 - Jun 2, 2005 - 4:58 am

Still didn't work. I can add printers and they show up as being shared but when I click the print button nothing happens. I also tried to save it as a pdf and I can't do that either. Seems like the whole print dialog box is not functional.

vinko - Jun 3, 2005 - 5:31 am

Dear Jeff,

Sorry to take so long to get back to you.

Sorry to hear that you're still having problems.

Was there a particular application where you're tring to Print from? Or was this result appear in every application you try to Print from?

Before we try the next thing. Please confirm that your Mac Mini is printing fine to both printers (HP 2355 and the Deskjet 9600), right?

On your iBook, can you please create a new user account, log into this new uesr account and see if you can print.

Note: If you do not know how to create a new user account you can follow Apple's instructions on the subject.

If the above works, then there may be a corruption in some of your Print preference files.

On the iBook, log into your original User Account, then find the following files from your Home "Library" folder at the path: ~/Library/Preferences.

1. com.apple.print.PrintCenter.plist
2. com.apple.print.PrintingPrefs.plist
3. com.apple.print.favorites.plist
4. com.apple.print.custompresets.plist

Move these 4 files to your desktop.

Note: "~/" means your Home directory not the Root which is "/". Your Home directory is the folder marked with the same name as your current log in account. This is normally shown in the Finder window's Sidebar.

I hope this helps.

-- Vinko

Thank you for choosing macosx.com