HP 6500A+ Adds extra 1/2" margin to top & bottom of page & compresses content to fit reduced Area [ Edited ]

[ciramjo]

I have a new HP 6500A plus printer. It works fine except that it adds an extra 1/2" margin to the top and bottom of printed text documents, web pages, etc., while compressing the data to fit in the reduced print area.  This makes the font smaller and harder to read on printed documents. Through experimentation, I have found that this does not happen if I turn on borderless printing. However, borderless printing is not compatible with duplexing (double sided printing) or plain paper - the type you would use to print an office document. (the incompatibility with plain paper is right out of the user's guide). It makes no sense to me that HP would design a printer with this feature, so I assume I am doing something wrong.  I have gone through all of the printer settings and the User's guide to no avail. I did not have this issue with my last HP printer, an HP Deskjet 970Cxi. I print from two different computers. One is running Window XP, service pack 3, the other runs 64-bit Windows 7.

Thanks for your help.

John

Update: I just found out that this issue occurs only when I am printing double sided using the duplexer. The manual says that double sided printing requires a minimum 0.47" top and bottom margin. However, I have the top & bottom margins set to 1", so I still don't see why is it adding the extra margin to make it almost 1.5" top & bottom.

[007OHMSS]

There are settings in the print drivers and in the software. This document may help:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02464969&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=4083977&tmp...

[ciramjo]

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, this does not relate to my problem, and thus did not solve it.

However, I do have some additional information. My son recently purchased the same printer. He has two compuers on his network One computer is a PC running Windows XP, and the other is Macintosh. The Windows PC has the same issue I reported, while the Macintosh does not. So I presume this issue is caused by the Windows driver.

I would like to know if there is anyone running a Windows PC that does not have this problem?

Thanks

John

[PDAtoZ]

I have the same problem on my printer - HP6500 709n. ALL my prints come out dwarfed (about 3/4in margin added top&bottom).

For example,

In Adobe reader, print preview shows no margin but prints come out with huge margin.

In word, I changed the margin to 0, and ignored warning I exceeded the printable area, but printout still has almost inch wide margin both at the top and the bottom.

I have checked paper size and other settings both in printer settings, and in word settings. Tried uninstalling, reinstalling the driver but nothing seems to solve the problem.

This is really annoying!!!

[PDAtoZ]

I have solved the problem!! It was HP's own print utilities that was causing the problem!

I remembered problem started occuring when I installed the hp utilities (HP monitor), in order to use network scanning.Prior to that I only installed the drivers.

Delete all HP bloatware and you should be able to print fine.