Tag: printing

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My printer is dead!

My HP Photosmart had run out of ink, so after spending £20 on new cartridges I was disappointed to find out that adding the new ink cartridges killed my printer. Leaving me with a repair bill which is a lot more than the printer cost to buy!

Last year I bought the HP PhotoSmart B110a in the main so I could print direct from my iPad using AirPrint.

I was impressed with, what was a very cheap printer, both in terms of print quality and scan quality. I particualrly liked how I could scan from my iPad as well as print. My older Canon multifunction required me to install drivers and software, the HP PhotoSmart had an embedded web server in it so all the functionality was available through a browser.

The printer was running out of ink, so I placed an order with Amazon for some new cartridges, cheaper than going to Staples. I did order proper HP cartridges too. Before they arrived I know some members of the family tried to print, but apart from an incomplete print out I wasn’t too worried.

The new cartridges arrived and I went through the process of installing them into the printer, something I had done a few times before.

After installing them I shut the lid and expected to be able to print… but no there was an error message on the screen of the printer.

Ink System Failure
 0xc19a0023
 Please turn printer Off and then On

Well I did that… no change.

I searched the web, and after a little difficulty found this HP page. Went through all the processes with no luck, still getting the error message. The printer hasn’t responded to any of my attempts to fix the problem. The printer is reporting that the printhead is “damaged”. I am not sure how installing new ink cartridges would have caused the printhead to fail…

I actually can’t remember when I bought the printer, didn’t blog about it, like I should have, and as a result I have a feeling that it is out of warranty. The HP site says it is… but that is based on when the retailer bought the printer, not me!

The “solution” appears to be to replace the printhead. Now having done some searching, it will cost about £40 to replace the printhead. My dilemma is that a replacement HP PhotoSmart printer (the 5510) is £70 and I have no guarantee that a replacement printhead will actually be a solution.

I have a horrible feeling that if did spend £40 on the printhead and it didn’t work, I would have wasted a fair bit of cash and would still need to buy a replacement printer!

The scanner part still works so it’s a bit of a quandary on how to move forward. I can still print using my old Canon printer (but not from the iPad), hmmm, not sure what to do.

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Printing from Parallels

Now printing documents from Parallels should be a simple affair. The Windows VM should just print and go…

Parallels installs the following printer…

Which then should be delivered to the printer attached to the Mac, which in my case is a Canon MP600r.

The print job does read the Canon print queue… However the Mac decides to HOLD the print job and when you try and RESUME it, I get the following error.

The error says:

pstopdffilter/pstocupsraster failed with err number -31000

Now at this time I have no idea how to resolve this, except to either print direct from the VM to the Canon (as the Canon is wireless and on the network) or to use one of my printer sharing tricks.

Would be nice to know what’s causing the problem though and initial searches through Google don’t seem to resolve it.

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Adding the printer…

I had been putting off adding my Canon MP600R to my new iMac, as the process on my 10.5 iMac was not simple.

Well things have improved with 10.6 as it was very simple and much easier than with previous versions of OS X.

The key though was to have some patience as it can take a bit of time for the printer to appear in the printer list.

Once though it “appears” then it is quite easy to add the printer like any other USB, network or Bonjour printer.

Once added though, run Software Update to get the most up to date drivers from Apple.

Next job to be able to scan from the printer.

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Printing from your iPhone

So the iPhone has a really nice camera…

Okay so the iPhone has a camera! It doesn’t take bad photographs and ascamera phones go it ain’t bad!

Now with the Nokia N95 which does have a very nice camera, 5MP compared to the iPhone’s 3MP, and a Carl Zeiss lense, it is relatively simple to print images from the phone without needing to dump the photographs first onto a computer. I have printed the images via Bluetooth and USB.

With the iPhone it has been a little more challenging.

I first saw hope with the HP iPrint Photo (iTunes link) however your HP printer needs to be connected to a wifi network. Alas my A618 Photo Printer which is excellent for printing photographs, is not wifi capable; it does memory cards, USB and Bluetooth, but not wifi.

I then heard about the Canon Easy-Photo Print for iPhone (iTunes link) and as the owner of the wifi capable MP600r I thought ah ha a way of printing from my iPhone.

IMG_0242

Alas the application only works with the Pixma MP990, MP640 and MP560. As a result it couldn’t find my printer.

IMG_0241

Of course I am not going to change my printer so I can print from my iPhone.

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You’re starting to annoy me…

My Canon MP600r is starting to annoy me.

Every time I try to print from my iMac, the printer can not be found on the wireless network.

If I power cycle the printer, it “magically” appears and I can print!

The same more often then not for scanning.

Now I have no real idea what the problem is, whether it is a wireless, printer or some other issue.

I do need to do some further testing. Things I may do including connecting the printer by wire to a wireless WET54G and see if it is a printer issue.

If it is a wireless issue I may connect the printer direct to the iMac by USB and share it across the network.

Canon MP600r

More soon…

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Borderless Printing

Printing from Indesign CS2 using my Canon MP600R can be fraught with difficulties if I want to use borderless printing.

Even if I think everything is fine, the print which pops out of my printer has a white border… another (expensive) sheet of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro heads for the bin!

Part of the problem is the InDesign print window, which can be confusing and doesn’t always pass on what you ask to the printer.

Printing

The other part is that the Canon Mac printer driver won’t let you do borderless printing unless you are using one of their special papers.

As a result you can change the paper to borderless A4…

As a result you can change the paper to borderless A4…

But as you haven’t changed the paper in the Quality & Media of the print setup, the paper will default back to non-borderless A4 as you can’t use borderless printing with Plain Paper!

But as you haven’t changed the paper in the Quality & Media of the print setup, the paper will default back to non-borderless A4 as you can’t use borderless printing with Plain Paper!

Even if you now change the media to some posh (and expensive) Canon paper and print (what you think is borderless), your printout will still come out with white borders.

The key is to change the paper quality before you select the paper type.

Don’t mind me, I just need to go out and buy some more expensive paper…

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Why can’t I print?

So today I needed to print some documents for work tomorrow and would my Canon MP600R print? No it would not!

It was only while I was doing the washing up that I remembered that my Canon MP600r was wireless and of course I had only recently changed my 802.11g wireless network.

So of course I had to reconfigure the MP600R to join the new wireless network. Alas you can’t do this wirelessly, nor using the control panel on the printer itself. You need to connect via USB and then configure (on a Mac) via Printer Setup Utility.

Though usually this is a straightforward process, I had real problems today. Though I could change the settings I could not actually add the printer. In the end it actually froze my iMac and I needed to hard reboot. Once this was done I found I could add the printer.

Then of course I now need to check I can print from my other computers.

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Bluetooth Printing

I have tried to print via Bluetooth from my iMac to my new A618 compact photo printer and have failed, in the main as the driver wasn’t on my iMac.

A618

It can be relatively simple as I found with the PhotoSmart 375 I had previously. This is one of the reasons I create the guides on my website so that when I need to install a new or an existing printer for a second time, I can remember how to do it, likewise by putting them online I can access the guides from anywhere and if required on a separate device (which is useful if you need to reboot or shut other applications down).

Checking my guide it is of course a driver issue, time to find the driver…

In the end I moved the photographs I wanted to print from the iMac to a USB stick and used the printer remotely instead.

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Vista Printing Success

The other day I mentioned I was having issues with printing from a Windows Vista PC to a printer on a Mac (running 10.4).

Well you know what I should read my own guides, specifically the guide on Printing to a printer on a Mac running 10.4.x from a Windows XP PC.

In that guide is the clear statement:

Choose the relevant Printer Driver (or click Have Disk and put in the relevant drivers disk). Note that you should only use the Windows driver if you have a Postscript printer

I forgot that you don’t use the Windows Printer Driver, you need to use a Postscript driver.

This only came to light when I decided to use Bonjour for Windows to install the printer and when it came to choosing the correct printer driver, the Bonjour Printer Wizard only gave me the choice of a generic Postscript printer!

And yes it printed, guide coming soon.