I have a HP Laserjet 5MP printer which has worked without a hitch for years. I recently acquired a new PC and now it (the printer) is starting to hiccup occasionally. It prints a page or so and then halts and prints a cryptic error message.
My guess is that the PC is overwhelming the printer’s memory (it is only 2 MB) and corrupting its stack. Some programs, Microsoft Word, for example, seldom fail this way. Others (my Java IDE) fail about every other try.
The PC (a Dell Dimension XPS T500, 500 MHz Pentium III, 128 MB) is running Windows 98. As near as I can tell the drivers on the PC are the correct ones. The printer settings are displayed correctly and the PC says it knows it is a Laserjet MP5 out there.
Any ideas about what might be wrong or where I might go for help?
Is this problem only related to printing Postscript jobs? If so, you may have to download specific patches for programs that appear to be most affected. We sometimes get problems of this nature when using Adobe products and Quark XPress. Still, you may want to check out the HP web site for updated drivers for Windows 98.
A bit of a WAG, but I’ve found that some programs don’t respond well to the PCL 6 drivers, but work fine with PCL 5e. I’ve been told there were considerable changes from 5 to 6, so you might actually give the older drivers a shot if available for your printer…