Officejet 6700: Poor print alignment on second page when duplex printing

[Rank_Outsider]

Hi,

Colour printing seems to be at least good enough for basic office use with the 990c driver, however I've not compared photo printing.  It doesn't seem to have fixed the sub-standard alignment when printing in draft, however.

I also haven't compared printer resolution or tried printing onto special media using the alternative driver.  I expect that that I will discover sub-optimal printing or reduced features at some point, otherwise why would HP go the effort of developing printer-specific drivers?

Can anyone tell us if HP are actually looking into this driver issue or are we stuck with using this workaround?  Is anyone else having the same problem or is it just a rare occurance?

[Rank_Outsider]

UPDATE:

The 990c printer driver seems to miss part of the footer off the first side of each page, and part of the header off the second side of each page.

I suppose I could compensate for this by adjusting the margins on most things I print; however I don't particularly want to update all of our quality documentation and templates just to adjust the margins to allow for this - the header and footer information on those documents is important.

I just want a working printer driver for my printer - is that too much to ask?

[dephead2004]

Hi Rank_outsider,

I have been a bit quiet lately and will fill you in as much as I can but needless to say the issue is unresolved to my (and your) satisfaction. There is a nuclear solution which I have activated. More in due course

[Rank_Outsider]

I have downloaded the HP Deskjet 6980 series driver (about 250 MB of software because the driver only version of the download for XP didn't support network printing).  That was even worse than the 990c driver I tried earlier - the upper margin was quite large and the text appeared 'squashed' vertically (and the bottom footer was missing completely).  By messing around with the settings I found that the "minimise margins" settings fixed this, but only if I used no duplex or manual duplex - the option wasn't available with auto-duplex for some reason.

So my options seem to be:

1. Use the Officejet 6700 printer driver that is supposed to work with this printer and accept poor printing ('ghosting' on second page) when using duplex printing.
2. Use an alternative printer driver, obtaining cleaner text but losing headers and footers or abandoning duplex printing (not to mention the loss of printer-specific funtionality).

I also suspect my ink usage (and cost) has increased due to the use of a non-specific printer driver, but it's hard to be sure of this.

If anyone from HP is reading this forum are you able to confirm that HP is actively looking at this problem and hasn't given up on a fully working set of drivers for this printer?  This is extremely frustrating.

What doesn't help is that I managed to uninstall the 6700 printer from my computer by clicking once on a link in my Start menu - I did (accidentally) click on "Uninstall" which is listed next to the "Product support web site" link in my Start menu - however surely it is good practice to give users a "are you sure you want to uninstall the printer" option before proceeding to delete everything?  This just adds to the amount of time I have wasted on this printer.

[dephead2004]

I regret to say the nuclear option was to return it as not fit for purpose and obtain an HP Officejet Pro 8600 PLUS. It is perfect in every respect compared to the  6700. Chalk and cheese. Send it back, my friend. It is not our job to waste so much time and energy on HP's problem

[HP6700P]

got it yesterday

and what do you think same problem

firmware update NO GO

drivers change NO GO

i did see that the problem is more prominent when you do concept printing then when you do normal or best.

but no reason for it to do this.

reading all these posts it seems a production fault? where HP does not provide a sollution?

replacing it with the same printer with the same problem does not seem to be a good one 😉

[dephead2004]

The only solution as I posted elsewhere is to replace the printer. I got an Officejet 8600 Pro PLUS and it is perfect. It might as well be another printer manufacturer.

[jbra]

Same problem here! Also, this issue is NOT solved.

Well, it is obviously a software / firmware bug.

Do HP Engineers read this forum?

[ahmedmesbah]

Just wanted to chime in with what I've noticed with my 6700 and a possible workaround. I too have blurred text/ghosting on the second side of duplex printed documents.

• It only affects black text. Colored text prints fine.
• If you select "Flip on Short Edge" rather than the default "Flip on the Long Edge", the ghosting/blurriness disappears.
• If you use the hp ePrint software to duplex print the ghosting/blurriness disappears
• Printing from my Surface 2 running Windows RT 8.1 is faultless. The Surface is using a different driver.

So, this obviously a driver issue. Since the last update to the driver was in October 2012, I'm not holding my breath on this one. The only workaround appears to be to use ePrint.

I, too, had my printer, duplexer and cartridges replaced by hp Support to no avail.

[posiedee]

Thank you dephead2004!!!!

I have tried countless solutions and yours works! You should get a medal, if you havent yet 🙂