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TICKET ARCHIVE -> IP printer setup problem

binzo - Apr 18, 2007 - 6:26 pm

I've been trying to fix a printer setup problem for a few days now without success.

A few days ago I attempted to update a printer driver in an attempt to fix an Adobe Acrobat printing error and now can't print from one of my machines.

I'm running a wireless network with both Macs (running OSX tiger) and PC's (Windows) and two HP printers. One printer is an HP7210 all-in-one and the other is a HP CP1700; both printers are connected to the network by Motorola Wireless Printservers. The printers have fixed IP addresses and I can ping the addresses from any of the machines.

All of the machines are printing fine except for the iMac which I attempted to update the printer driver. During the update, I deleted the printers by resetting the printing system, and tried adding them anew via system preferences. After adding a printer back to the printer list (IPP) and trying a test print, I get the message "printer busy, will retry again in 5 seconds", this soon becomes "...will retry again in 10 seconds...". The process hangs here--nothing is output from the printer.

I've tried adding the printers with different IP protocols available (IPP, LPD, HP Direct Jet - Socket) and get different messages: with LPD, I get "Control file sent successfully..." and the process hangs there; with HP Direct Jet, I get "Network host 'xxx.xxx.x.xx' is busy; will retry in 20 seconds..." and again, nothing from the printer.

Since all the other machines can talk and print fine, I'm assuming all the hardware is working ok. Also, using a shared printer through the other Mac we have works fine...just can't get the iMac to print on its own.

Can anyone help?

gsahli - Apr 19, 2007 - 10:01 am

If the Mac printed via network before, you must have had Gutenprint and hpijs plus ESP ghostscript installed before (the only drivers that work over network for these printers). Try reinstalling those drivers:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/macosx

(Gutenprint is for the CP1700, hpijs plus ESP ghostscript is for the Officejet 7200 series)

Then, read the print server manual to find out which IP printing protocol is supported. If it's LPD or IPP, be sure to also find the print server's queue name so you can enter it where asked for in Printer Setup. HP Jetdirect protocol (called raw port 9100 printing in Windows-centric manuals) doesn't use queue name.

binzo - Apr 19, 2007 - 2:48 pm

Thanks for the reply gsahli!

You're absolutely right, I am/have been using the hpijs package for the printers, and tried reinstalling them, but it didn't seem to help. Incidentally, the hpijs driver works great for the CP1700.

I actually seemed to have solved the problem a few hours before I received your response. Here's what I did to fix the problem:

After a bunch of headscratching, I tried starting from a clean slate. I reset the printer service first to get rid of any old queues and jobs. Then I powercycled the printers and printservers to clear the printer memory. I ended up uninstalling the HP software I had on the iMac, uninstalling the driver I had tried to update, then uninstalling the hpijs package, then zapped the PRAM, then reinstalled the hpijs/ghostscript drivers. I'm guessing that the driver update I attempted to use from the HP website created some conflicts with the driver I already had installed.

After all that, I was able to successfully add the new printers using the LPD protocol (the server supports IPP, LPD, and HP Jetdirect). One detail that stumped me was that the queue name I entered in the Printer Setup Utility window (L2 for USB on my printserver) didn't display in the printer info window (OS X seems to have assigned a queue name based on the printer name that was entered) and I think prevented the iMac from printing; to deal with this, I ended up adding the printer named as the IP address of the printserver which gave me the same queue name being used by the Powerbook to successfully access the printer. I changed the printer name to something easier to understand later after the printer was successfully added.

Now we're happy campers and printing is working perfectly as before.

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.