HP Officejet 4500 Desktop has stopped printing

[Steve_R]

Sorry if this question appears twice - I posted and then can't find the original posting. My Officejet 4500, when I send a document to it, will just pull the paper most of the way in and stop. The display will flash "Printing..." but nothing more happens. The print queue shows my document as printing, but if I cancel the document from the queue that will continue to show instead of disappearing from the queue. I reinstalled the print drivers but no help. When I turn the power off, the paper ejects and then after turning the printer back on it appears ready to print. Diagnostics show no problem.

It started doing this with a different laptop but continued to work on this one. Then, the trouble transferred over. It is independent of the application I'm printing from.

[Daniel_L]

Hey Steve,

Here's some information regarding this issue. This link will resolve most issues with the printer not picking up or feeding paper:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01969913&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&la...

This document however is in regards to jobs being stuck in the print queue and also contains the Print Diagnostic Utility which may be very beneficial:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02205477&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&lc=en&product=391...

Hope this helps! Please post back if there are still problems.

[Steve_R]

The problem really had nothing to do with paper feed (though the printer does love to munch a sheet of paper now and then). I thought I had solved it by swapping out a different printer cable, and it printed several documents. But then it reverted back to its bad behavior. When I ran the diagnostic, it said the printer was OK and then the test page was pulled in and it's flashing "Printing..." at me like before. The only other observation that may of value is that, when it shuts down and the carriage moves back and forth, sometimes it is very noisy and may even try to grab a sheet of paper as it goes off.

[Daniel_L]

Does the computer still show the job in the printing queue?

[Steve_R]

I did not see the test page in the print queue. Documents are visible there until I turn the printer off and delete them.