What's wrong with printers?

welshsteve

In general, what is wrong with printers? Or more specifically, the software supplied with them.

None of the manufacturers of network seem to supply software that makes it easy to get rid of print jobs gone wrong. And when you have a networked printer that doesn't have it's own view panel on the device itself, it makes it very difficult to get rid of old print jobs.

Here's a prime example I've come across.

We have remote users who log on via a citrix server. One such user logged in and sent a print job to a networked printer in the office here. The job failed for some reason (not sure why) and he immediately realised his mistake and sent the print job to his local printer (I set up Citrix to recognise the default local printer within the session). He then logged out of the citrix session, leaving the lingering/failed job in the print queue. This meant that nobody else was able to print to this printer. I tried deleting the job from the queue as admin but it still refused to delete. The user logged back in and couldn't delete either. Bizarre.

Re-installing the print driver was the only way to clear the queue which is really bizarre.

The network software supplied with this particular printer gives you no options for clearing the print queue at all. Why couldn't there just be some network printer software with the printer that can open up a queue and simply remove rogues like this quickly and easily?

This isn't the only printer I have come across this problem with, it's all printers I've come across. I've even made sure everyone has full admin rights to the printer and it still makes no difference and these instances still occur.

Does anyone else have these problems? Or am I missing something here?

One such printer is the Samsung CLP-500N

Arnie

Printer hardware keeps jamming up, printer spoolers keep refusing to cancel jobs, printer servers keep having connection issues, printer drivers keep being difficult to find. Story of my life. Sad

And the ink doesn't get any cheaper either.

welshsteve

I'm with you on that arnie, printers are light years behind the rest of technology

marrs

Well, after a good relationship for two years, Lexmark let me down big time. I still don’t know what the problem is, but I will get to the bottom of it. Do all Lexmark customers have problems like this after a loyal two years?

It has a lovely appearance. It’s easy to use, and it has great customer service. But, I’m afraid that isn’t enough for me. I want a reliable printer that will do what it’s told, when it’s told, not print one colour and not the other.
6 months ago, I’d have given Lexmark 5 stars, easily, but with these problems, it goes down in my estimations, and down in the ratings! If I buy another printer – which I might have to – I wont get one of these again.

welshsteve

I have owned two lexmark printers, and both have been rubbish Sad

I had an all-in-one which had a decent scanner, but the print quality was rubbish, the ink expensive, and I have so many issues with the print heads.

Kelvin

Have any of you tried clearing the spooled pirnt jobs by using this option? :

Right click on "my computer" select "manage services & applications" - "services" - "print spooler" then click stop service.

After doing that, go to: C:\Windows\system32\spool\printers then remove/delete all the *.shd and *.spl files located in that folder. Restart the spooler service and your printer should function again.

As for slow print jobs via networking, you can actually speed up the print job but installing network printer driver as local printer. This can be done by goin to: "Printer & Faxes" - "add printer" - "local" - "use existing/create new port"

Arnie

That is interesting. Hopefully I'll remember to check this post when the spooler gives problems again.

andersonshatch

I get this problem sometimes. I find that the solution is just to unplug the printer for a little while (OK for a single user printer, I understand that this probably would be very annoying for a networked printer as it deletes all the queued documents (I think))

Quite annoying; shouldn't have to do stuff like that.

marrs

Lexmark is shitty. I recently bought a new PC with Vista to learn that none of my shitty Lexmark shitty printers have Vista drivers available. Someone got a reply from Lexmark, something to the effect of, “Because we feel the components of this printer would not support Windows Vista, we will not be developing Vista drivers for it.” So it’s impossible to make it work… we can send a man to the moon, but we can’t make a printer that works in WinXP work in Vista.