« Posts tagged Printers

Short: Mopier HP Printers Make Me Sad

March 15, 2011 / posted in "It's a Feature", Short, Troubleshooting / 2 Comments

After setting up a few users on yet another HP Laserjet P4015dn, one person complained that when they told Microsoft Word to print 10 copies (or any number, really) only 1 copy would actually print. The printer wouldn’t report any errors, and neither would the computer – everything would just report normal.

A closer look revealed that the printer driver had Mopier Mode enabled. As per HP, this mode is used when the printer has an EIO hard disk installed. If the printer doesn’t have one, it will only print one copy. To disable Mopier Mode, do the following:

  1. Open the (Devices and) Printers Control Panel.
  2. Right-click on the printer, and choose (Printer) Properties.
  3. Click the Device Settings tab.
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the list, and change “Mopier Mode” to “Disabled”, then click OK.

Easy, right?

TL;DR Version: If your HP Printer is only printing one copy when told to do more, make sure Mopier Mode is disabled in the Printer Properties.

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e/0×00000006

May 27, 2010 / posted in "It's a Feature", Hardware, howto, Microsoft, Networking, Software, Troubleshooting, Windows / 14 Comments
An HP P4015dn - This morning, the bane of my existence

An HP P4015dn - This morning, the bane of my existence

Note: Make sure to read over the comments on this post – there is some excellent advice there as well.

Windows 7 has been very good to me so far, but this morning I was literally pounding my desk in frustration over a printer issue. I just received two brand-new Dell Optiplex 780′s and was in the process of configuring the printers on them when I happened across this little message:

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e

Now here’s the situation. The computers are running Windows 7 Professional x64. The printer (an HP P4015dn) is connected to a Windows XP x86 machine and shared normally. Of all of our printers, this is the only one directly shared with a computer due to a wiring issue I have yet to correct (although now I’m going to make an effort to fix it). I have several other computers running XP and Vista (x86 and x64) that already print this computer without issue, so I was rather stumped. Then I realized I had attempted to install the Vista x64 Postscript drivers instead of the Windows 7 ones.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 no longer provides a dedicated ‘Printers’ control panel, and the ‘Devices and Printers’ one doesn’t have a Server Properties option to let you manage installed drivers. So, I stopped the print spooler service and manually deleted the drivers from C:\Windows\System32\spool\Drivers. When I tried to re-add the printer, though, I got this message:

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0×00000006

Hmm. Google wasn’t much help, so I went to an old standby – I mannually added the network printer by choosing to create a local port (silly, I know). Here’s how to get this working:

  1. In the Devices and Printers control panel, choose Add a Printer.
  2. In the new window, click Add a local printer.
  3. On the following screen, select Create a new port, and then choose Local Port from the drop-down list and click Next.
  4. When asked to enter a Port Name, use the full path to the printer. For example, if your printer share is called Dave and is a computer with the name PrintSrv1, you would enter \PrintSrv1Dave as the Port Name. If you receive an error saying The network path was not found, check the computer name and share name, then try again.
  5. You should be asked to install a driver. Manually download the correct driver (in this case, the HP Universal PostScript driver worked for my HP P4015dn) from the manufacturer’s website and extract it to a folder on your computer. Then click the Have Disk… button in the Add Printer wizard and point it to that folder, then click OK and Next.
  6. Wait for it to install the driver.

At this point, the printer should be installed and functional. Print a test page to make sure everything worked alright, and then do a little dance (as long as no one is looking)!

HP Stereotypes Canadians, Rage Ensues

October 1, 2009 / posted in Hardware, Rants, Software, Troubleshooting / No Comments

Recently, I installed a nice shiny new HP Laserjet P2055DN for a few administrative employees, replacing a horribly old Lexmark T612 that had been knocking on death’s door for a few years already. The install went off without a hitch, however I was getting scattered reports of documents printing on Legal-sized paper instead of Letter, and some jobs that just refused to print, insisting that the user needed to put paper in the manual feed tray.

I tried to reproduce the problems on my machine, but never could, and the user who was experiencing the problem was frequently away from her office, so it was difficult to see what was going on.

Finally this morning, it happened to her again just as I happened to be walking by. A quick inspection of the printer settings told the story. Apparently, her computer (and her’s alone) was defaulting to the A4 paper size, which is slightly different from Letter. As a result, it would ask for it to be loaded through the manual tray and, failing that, print on Legal instead.

Figuring this would be a simple fix, I went in to the printer settings and tried to modify the default preferences. No dice. HP marks the defaults as read-only and won’t let you change them. Any attempts to set other areas to print to Letter as default would simply result in them being returned to A4.

At this point, getting rather fed up, I started digging through settings trying to find what was different on her computer – after all, the four other computers printing to that printer were working fine.

At last I stumbled upon the culprit – the Regional Settings. Every other computer in the office had it’s location set to the United States, whereas her computer had the location set to Canada. As soon as I changed it (no restart required), the HP drivers immediately defaulted to Letter instead of A4. Problem solved.

So thank you, HP, for not letting your users pick there own defaults and assuming that Canadians only us A4-sized paper. I bet you think we all live in igloos and say ‘aboot’ instead of ‘about’ too, eh?