Network Laser Printer wont Print
 

Business Question here. We have 3 HP 8100N's in our office. They are network printers. We recently changed over to a dedicated t1 and now one of the printers wont print. It shows no error and the documents just sit in the spooler. We run all of our computers on a private 192.168 network and the printers are included in this. I have power cycled the printer, no luck. I have connectivity as i can ping the Ip address of the printer and i get a response. Most of our network including our domain controller exchange server etc are subcontracted and i dont have access to them...and that company says that this problem is a local problem and they wont support it. anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be or what else i might check? I am stumped as i dont think it is an error with the printer as it shows no error, and i dont think it is a connection problem as i can ping it. Also, i dont know where the spooler resides, on the printer or on the print server. The print server is our file server and hosts all 3 printers we have, so i would assume that if it had a problem it would show an error. (Tried printing directly from it - no luck)

thanks in advance to anyone who answers.

Shane McGough

Try turning the printer off, unplug the power cord and the network cable from the PC, let it sit for 10 - 15 minutes, plug them back in, and turn it back on.

If you run a self test on the printer, does everything look okay. Anything stand out as strange?

Do you use Jet Admin to administer the printers. If so, try resetting the network card through there.

tried shutting it off...but not for 15 minutes and i didnt unplug it. I just tried setting it up as a local printer with a TCP/IP port and it printed. Windows Help actually helped - wow. Also though...it doesnt explain to well why this works and how to fix it (without having to install a new printer on everyones desktop. I had assumed that cycling the power would self test it - and i dont know how to reset the network card. although now that it will print as a 'local' printer i can eliminate the network as a problem. Some backround - the regular network admin doesnt work here anymore and in the interim i am filling in. I have a A+ cert and am working on my MCP in Win2000...so i dont have experience with networks like i do home PC's. Thanks for the help...any idea now what this might be?

Depending on the network card, some print cards have the print server built right into them. If it does, power cycling it should reset it. I have seen, however, for some problems we actually needed to unplug the data cable and power cord. Normally though, power cycling it would reset it.

If it is just a network card, doesn't include the print server on it, then there is something wrong with the print server and power cycling the printer won't reset it.

I'm guessing you could try power cycling the external print server or if it is a PC acting as a print server, try rebooting it.

thanks i will try that.