HP 2500L and Mac OSX 10.4.4

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stassi

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Printer worked fine, until I added the optional paper tray. Printer is connected via ethernet, using an AirLink+ printer router. Worked great until yesterday. All other computers on the network print great to it, but my G4/800 with 10.4.4 does the "printer stopped" loop. I can try to restart printing, but it just stops again.

I have tried reinstalling the printer in Printer Setup Utility (lots of times) using Apple's installed driver for the 2500, and the one downloaded from the "Gimp-Print" site (now, with a new name). I've also tried the Generic Postscript driver. All with the same results.

Otherwise, printer works fine - I can send a test print from the browser Airlink interface,so the connection works - it's clearly a driver problem. I tried the utility "Printer Setup Repair" and still no go.

Prefer to not reinstall OS, so anybody got any other ideas?

Thanks.
 
You don't amputate your arm because of a paper cut. When a printer suddenly stops, it is usually not a driver issue. It is most likely a communications issue. My experience with newer HPs is that their communications functions seem to be something of a hack compared to other manufacturers. You say that the printer is connected via Ethernet. What is the communications protocol?

Before you respond, I suggest that you power down the printer and bring it back up. If you are using IP-printing make sure that you have the printer's IP-address. (This should not be an issue if Bonjour is working.) Run Printer Setup Utility to ensure that everything is straight there. It cannot hurt to dance around the room while chanting and shaking a rattle.
 
Thank you for your reply, but this can't be a communications issue. I'm able to send a print command to the printer, using the browser interface for the USB to Ethernet bridge. It prints just fine, that way. Also, I just tried printing when booted from my backup hard drive's OS, and it printed great.

The problem is clearly in my OS's printer setup. I've already tried the trial of Printer Setup Repair, and no joy. I tried copying the printer driver from my backup hard drive to the new one.

Am I using the correct path for printer drivers - Library>Printers>PPDs>Contents>Resources>en.lproj>HP Color LaserJet 2550.gz? (could this be a more annoying path?)

I'd really like to avoid an OS reinstallation - there's just not enough time in my life for that - although if I keep trying stuff that doesn't work, maybe I just need to bite the bullet.

Anyone got any ideas?
 
stassi said:
Thank you for your reply, but this can't be a communications issue. I'm able to send a print command to the printer, using the browser interface for the USB to Ethernet bridge. It prints just fine, that way. Also, I just tried printing when booted from my backup hard drive's OS, and it printed great.

The problem is clearly in my OS's printer setup. I've already tried the trial of Printer Setup Repair, and no joy. I tried copying the printer driver from my backup hard drive to the new one.

Am I using the correct path for printer drivers - Library>Printers>PPDs>Contents>Resources>en.lproj>HP Color LaserJet 2550.gz? (could this be a more annoying path?)

I'd really like to avoid an OS reinstallation - there's just not enough time in my life for that - although if I keep trying stuff that doesn't work, maybe I just need to bite the bullet.

Anyone got any ideas?
Click to expand...
Why in Heaven would you even suspect the OS? Are you using the PPD for the HP Color LaserJet 2500L or for the much newer HP Color LaserJet 2550L?
 
As I mentioned above, it's the HP Color LaserJet 2550 printer driver. In the Print Setup app it comes up as "HP Color LaserJet 2550 Series". It's as new as it comes. The print capabilities work just fine when booted from my backup drive (last backed up to a week ago).

Doesn't work when booted off my daily backup drive (backed up last night). Doesn't print when logged into my *clean* test account. Doesn't print from my user account. I've removed and reinstalled the printer in the Printer Setup Utility numerous times. I've restarted every associated piece of hardware several times. It still prints just fine when sending the print command from the browser, so the connection is fine.

The reason in Heaven that I suspect that some component of the Printer service is messed up in the OS, is that it's the only place from which I can't print. I'm thinking that some component has become corrupted, but for the life of me, can't figure out what component it is. The Print Center works fine for my other printers, but won't talk to this printer. Again - the drivers are fine - I copied the same driver from the drive it works on. I've repaired permissions, cleaned caches...

I think I've answered your questions about the configuration, but I need to get some ideas if you have any.
 
The reason that I asked you about the 2500L and the 2550L is that you mentioned the former in your first post and the latter in your second. They are two different printers with the 2500L the older model. These are PostScript-compatible printers. This means your printer can print without the proper PPD file, but some of its features will not work properly if at all. The 2500L uses PostScript v3010.107. The 2550L uses PostScript v3011.001. So, there are two possible causes of your problems and neither have anything to do with your OS. Conceivably, there may be compatibility issue if you try to print to an older printer using a newer version of PostScript. I've never seen it, but it is worth consideration. The other possibility is that your problems arise when you print from an application that accesses printer-specific features of your printer. If you use the wrong PPD, these printer-specific features may not be handled properly and could possibly refuse to print.

You should find HP-authored PPD for both printers installed on your system. There are both on mine. If one or the other of them is missing, then you can download either of them from HP's website. I have a feeling that you may be missing the PPD for the older 2500L. If you don't have it, try it instead of the 2550L's PPD file.
 
Sorry about typing 2500 instead of 2550 in the first post - I DID mean 2550 - I cut typing in High School (who'da thought I'd need it?)

Given that last night I had some time to really address this, and that I won't for while, I took the opportunity to undergo drastic measures (I was very tired of futzing with finding every driver I could and trying them - remember, this DID work,it just stopped working).

So, I reinstalled the OS, using Archive and keeping my user stuff (for laziness' sake). It's not that long a process, since I have the backup updaters to install from my own machine. It didn't work, though. I found that odd, since I'd assumed the problem to be based in the OS, as the printer worked on my backup drive, and not in my user, or my clean test user. Now, I coulda spent the next few months picking it over, but my backup was only a week old, and all my newer stuff was only a day old - AND it's been a busy week, so I hadn't done ALL that much last week. So, I backed up my immediate stuff (like email), wiped the old main hard drive, and cloned my backup to it (I use DejaVu). This morning, I moved my email accounts back in.

After repairing permissions, the printer is working great, from any program (I'd wondered if TextEdit had been the problem, since I'd been using it to test all my printing, and it had worked from the browser interface, but when testing it "stopped" on everything).

So, now I have a working system, but it took some extreme measures. My biggest disappointment is that I have no way to really know what it was that caused it - so if my clients encounter a similar issue, I can't help them fix it (I'm a Mac Consultant) - but I just couldn't afford any more down-time. Of course, I can use it as an example of the importance of having backups!

The info you've written above makes perfect sense - unfortunately, with the delay of emails in a forum like this, I've already tried all these ideas (I did so much driver shuffling - it's crazy) BTW, you should know that HP DOESN'T make their drivers for this model downloadable. They tell you it's included in the Apple OS, and that's it. What a pain! I did manage to try to scavenge them from backups, and I tried the GimpPrint (GutenPrint?) drivers, all to no avail.

There's clearly something in the communications system from the Users folders (I have to assume that they were the culprit, since the OS reinstallation didn't fix it), and maybe their ability to communicate with the OS. Also, I tried just dragging the old user folder in - but there were permission limitations, and I just didn't have the patience to try doing it as root (I'm infinitely patient on client machines, but not my own)- but that might have worked. It was actually easier to have DejaVu do all the work.

I apologize for the NOVEL I'm writing, but I know that there may be some residual curiosity on the part of anyone who's been following this. Also, MisterMe, I REALLY appreciate your help.

Take Care, y'all!
 
stassi, a couple of things: Assuming that your printer uses HP's PostScript clone, there is just one driver. That is Apple's driver. Each PostScript (or clone) printer uses a model-specific PPD file in conjunction with Apple's PostScript driver. The PPD file allows your system to access the model-specific features of the printer. As I told you in my previous post, PPD files are optional. You can communicate with your printer as a "Generic" PostScript printer. You may remember that MacOS X 10.0 did not support PPD files. Presumeably to save space, Apple now Gzips the PPD files that it bundles with MacOS X. In general, PPD files are OS-agnostic. As an aside, I bought a HP DeskJet 2500 CM before HP added Mac support. I acquired the PPD file by extracting it from the Windows installer. It worked perfectly on my Macs. If you unGzip an Apple-supplied PPD file and append the .ppd extension, it will work on just about any OS that supports PostScript.

You and I seem to have different strategies for acquiring what we need. In the case of HP drivers, I search the HP website. No matter what you were told, PPD files for both the 2500L and your printer, the 2550L, are there and available for download. Both are exactly where I expect them to be.
 
I did know that I could certainly use the "Generic" PPD, but of course, that wasn't working, either. I tried copying the appropriate HP PPD file from it's location in my backup drive (where it DID work) to the drive on which I was working (where it didn't)- also to no avail. If it was that simple, I'd've been really happy.

Now, I AM curious where on HP's website you found the driver for the 2550L. I did find some software - an installer - on HP's website, but I could not see what was in the package, and Pacifist wouldn't open it, either. So, I had no way of knowing whether it was installing an actual driver. There's no listing of such, when viewing the installer log after using it. Of course, using it didn't help at all. If you DID manage to find a driver, itself, I'd really like to know where you found it, as I did some MAJOR searching there, myself.

I know that everyone who works on computers has his own methodology, and I'm always anxious to see what others do. I'd love to find out what you would have done differently from what I did, so that I may incorporate your methods into mine.

Again, thanks.
 
You can find the driver for the HP Color LaserJet 2500L here. You can find the driver for the HP Color LaserJet 2550L here. You can search for drivers for any HP printer by entering its model number here.
 
Thanks. That is where I downloaded the installer from. The install log didn't mention that it installed the driver. But I did install it. Obviously, that didn't do the job.

I appreciate your help.
 
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