Bizarre printer behavior

Factual Questions
1

My father has a printer (Lexmark Z43) that will only print the first page and stops. If he goes to print, say, a 5 page report through MSword, IE or Notepad, it will fully print page one then announce “Printing Complete,” ignoring the remaining pages. He is running Win2000 w/ all updates and services packs.

I have reinstalled the newest & proper W2K drivers and same problem. I have change BIOS settings for the printer port and same again. I have searched many online help sites with no luck.

Any SD’ers out there ever seen or corrected this situation?

2

No good news, sorry. I have two different El Cheapo Lexmark printers, a Z11 and a Z22, and both of them are legendary in our family for the different kinds of weird sh*t they can come up with, from one day to the next.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-2375165-418-5906534.html

So you’re not alone.

What usually works with our gonzo Lexmarks is simply uninstalling them, and then reinstalling them. We don’t even bother fiddling around with printer drivers.

Also, FWIW, I have found that usually the problem, whenever I can actually solve the current problem and figure out what the printer wants this time, is that there’s a conflict between the printer’s commands and what Microsoft Works (to use an example) has as its printing parameters. Faced with this seemingly insoluble conflict, the Lexmark simply throws up its hands and says, “I can’t handle this!” and leaves for the day.

Sometimes I find out that Works wants to print it one way and the Lexmark wants to print it another way–conflicts between paper sizes, for example. Works thinks it has one size of paper and the Lexmark thinks it has a different size. So check all your Printer Settings and Setup menus. Remember that the word processor has these menus, too.

3

I don’t have a Lexmark printer, but I had a HP printer with a similar problem (it wouldn’t print at all even though Win2K said that the job was printing, etc.). When I tried to download the drivers for the thing HP said, “Win2K has the drivers for your printer built in, nothing for you to download here.” Okay, so why doesn’t it work? No answer, of course, so I downloaded the Win98 drivers and installed them. Worked fine.

4

Is that a serial printer? If so, check the serial port settings, and maybe IRQ’s.

5

Urban Ranger - Nah IRQ’s nothing to do with this … wish it was that simple.

Unfortunatly the LExmarks are … hmm … well rthey are cheap for a reason.

make sure that your ink is full up.

Take the paper out and restake it (it may be a feed problem)

Buy a bubble jet :slight_smile:

6

I thought as much, a case of CPS (cheap printer syndrome).

Thanks for the support

7

I’d be a bit more hesitant to exclude any causes.

8

I had the same problem once. Uninstall all windows driver, disconnect the printer from the pc, install manufacturer’s drivers connect the printer back. it worked.

The key is to not let windows install its own drivers.

9

Got it working, thanks to all!

andy_fl got it right with the total disconnect.

Thanks