PC Printing question

[HornyHenry]

A friend's computer has a printing problem.
It's a cheap Dell with an HP 845 printer. It runs test print OK, and it prints from the internet OK.
But when you print from Word or Quicken, it acts like it's printing, but there's nothing on the sheet. I loaded a new driver from HP and the problem is the same. Any ideas what could be wrong???
Thanks, HH

 

[luvtofly]

When you say it acts like it is printing does it tend to print faster from a program than it does from the internet? When you do the test page does it give you black and white as well as color? Have you tried looking for new drivers for this printer?

I don't have a clue how to answer this question yet, I really wish I did! I've had this happen before, however it was just because I was out of black ink.

Hope you can get this sorted out! I know how frustrating it is! They gave me a printer at work that is not really vista compatible! Everytime I want to print something I have to reboot to get it to work! GRR!

 

[SweetErika]

Have you tried looking through the HP Support/Troubleshooting thing on HP's website? I've found a lot of my questions (even more complex ones) are covered there. I don't know if this link will work for you, but if not, go to HP.com, click Support at the top and enter your printer number, then go through the process.

HP also has pretty good email and chat support. Try contacting them through the HP site if you can't find the answer to your question.

 

[rydia57]

I have an HP printer, before I could get it to work... I had to upgrade to W2k, I had to have service pack 3, did you check any of those?

 

[fgarvb1]

HP products are great.

HP software sometimes suck!

 

[HornyHenry]

Have you tried looking through the HP Support/Troubleshooting thing on HP's website? I've found a lot of my questions (even more complex ones) are covered there. I don't know if this link will work for you, but if not, go to HP.com, click Support at the top and enter your printer number, then go through the process.

HP also has pretty good email and chat support. Try contacting them through the HP site if you can't find the answer to your question.

Thanks. I have tried everything there except one or two. They remind us that the HDD must have 32-100mb of space for the printer to print right.
Now, this is an old lady's PC and she only does banking, quicken, and sometimes Word, and solitare, so there shouldn't be a problem with this.
BUT, she may have accidently held down a key and made thousands of copies of something and filled up her disk. I didn't check that. Got to be sure memory is not used up too.
The other thing was to reinstall the port. That can't be the problem.

I've done everything else: reset printer and PC, load a new driver, be sure no other programs are running (Stopped SVG from scanning), tried a different program (Yes, 2 fail, but internet is good).
It's not out of ink and the colors all work, and the cable must be good because the internet prints out the same port.

I'll let you know if I find something.

 

[SweetErika]

Have you tried printing from Notepad?

If that works, you might try installing OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) to see if it prints from their Word Processor. IIRC, it uses less memory and is a more stable program than Word on the whole. At least it'd buy you some time to figure out the problem if it works. And allow her to print from a Word-like program.

I'd think it's more likely to be a software/driver conflict than a memory issue, but maybe not.

What operating system is the PC running?

 

[HornyHenry]

It's XP, SP2

Tried Notepad - same problem. Prints, but nothing on the page.
Looked at disk and memory. Both have plenty available.
She does have another new printer in a box that has never been used. I'll try installing that when I can get to it. She's 87 and just had hernia surgery and is recovering, so I don't want to bother her. Good for her that she can still use a computer at all!

 

[Emilio_di_Roccabruna]

Hi HornyHenry, just to be a bit more specific, could you tell us what kind of software she has on her PC? (OS, version of office suite, browser,..)

If you find that it prints fine from your browser, have you tried removing and reinstalling the office suite, or replacing it with something else? For example if she has MS Office 2007, try installing MS Office 2003 or even OpenOffice...

Not yet sure what the problem is but if the printer works from your browser, I don't think the problem's with your hardware. I think we can safely exclude that...