Classic Printing won't use Letter

Brian1237

Registered
In classic, Page Set-up (Laserwriter 8) no longer shows "Letter" or "Legal" sizes. Instead, it shows "na-letter" and "na-legal" and when I select either and print, my printer informs me that paper size "A4" is selected, and, of course, the margins of the printed document are all messed up. Also, my printer stops at each page and asks me to check the paper size. I'm guessing "na" is for "not applicable."

Everything worked fine until I installed the 4.4.11 Combo update back in April. I had 10.4.x before that. The Laserwriter 8 Page Set-up dialog box is different than it was prior to the update (although it is a version that's familiar to me from years ago). I've tried deleting the new driver and installing an older Laserwriter driver from another Mac on which I had not run the combo update. Although doing this makes printing fail completely, in the Print Dialog box I do actually see the version of it I remember, and I CAN select "Letter" and "Legal" (and there's no "na-letter" or "na-legal"). If I restart my Mac, it tells me that it needs to update the driver and does so, and then I'm back to "na-letter" and "na-legal" and a different Print Dialog box.

I'm printing on an Epson Aculaser CX11NF. Again, it used to work just fine and nothing I know of changed besides the Combo update.

Non-Classic printing usually works fine, but sometimes my printer thinks that a document is "A4" when it isn't. Since I end up changing the paper size directly on the printer's front panel (to avoid it stopping with each print and asking me to check the paper size because I don;t have A4 loaded), I'm guessing that this is my fault. Sometimes when printing from iPhoto from another Mac on my network, iPhoto automatically selects A4 instead of letter even though Letter is the default paper size for that Mac.

The application is MYOB Accounting Plus. I've had to change the formating of my checks and reports, and I can no longer print on the top inch-and-a-half of the page.

I have re-installed the system, the Epson software, and anything else I could think of. I have never wanted to print on a piece of A4 paper in my life. Any help getting Letter Size back in Classic is greatly appreciated. I haven't found anything about this issue anywhere!
 
Hello Brian1237 & welcome. You may already have see this but if not, it's worth a read. there are a few recommendations to try.

Topic : Mac os x 10.4.11 update -- causes printing problems for Lexmark X1150

I suggest you try downloading Onyx, making sure you get the Tiger version, and run it.

When Onyx has been launched, select the Automation tab. There should be a list of Maintenance and Cleaning tasks. Tick them all to run, but leave the Log files and Font Cache unchecked.

It will take several minutes to run them all and you will be prompted to reboot your Mac.

The symptoms of your issue may or may not be directly solvable and it may be to complex to try to figure out exactly why this is happening but the reality may be that you have start pretty much from scratch. By this I mean to boot from your OS X 10.4 Install disc, do an "Archive and Install", leaving the box checked to preserve your users and settings and this will install the point version of OS X that is on your Install disc. You can then use Software Update to update to 10.4.10, or the point version where your printers functioned how you like.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with more specific advice about your problem so fingers X-d.

Here is another discussion about printer issues + 10.4.11 update:

Topic : After downloading OS X 10.4.11 Update (Intel) Lexmark printer stopped"]Topic : After downloading OS X 10.4.11 Update (Intel) Lexmark printer stopped

Another way forward might be to buy a new printer if you can afford it. I know this is sub-optimal if you have a perfectly functioning printer, but you have to look at the overall situation. Are you prepared to spend time/energy troubleshooting this if the first option doesn't work?

Hope this has helped :)
 
Back
Top