My HP OfficeJet 6500 wireless printer prints slowly with very long pauses during the print...

[Howard_Woodard]

I saw a very old post on this but no solution so I'll try a new post.

Also, I'm not sure that I'm even barking up the right tree.

My PC is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and is current with all updates.

Recently my Officejet 6500A Plus E710n-z printer began to print really slow with long pauses and, in some cases, garbling the output and in other cases just not printing.  If I print the various printer and cartridge test pages from the printer itself they also exhibit the long pauses but do seem to ultimately print correctly.  I've been fiddling with this trying to isolate the issue so long I'm not really sure that the local (from the printer's front panel) printouts always are correct.

I uninstalled the printer and all of its associated software and then reinstalled using the latest available download from the HP support site but it made no difference.

After gritting my teeth at such an expensive troubleshooting step I purchased a comple set of new HP cartridges and installed them.  Again, no difference.

Not sure if this is a red herring or not but when I printed to it using both the iPrint feature of my iPhone as well as the email-based HP ePrint feature, while still having the really long pauses it did eventually print a text-only email message correctly.

Finally, on the first time I printed the properties/test page it printed the HP logo, then displayed that the ink was drying for what seemed like about a minute, form-fed to another page, delayed for a while and then printed a wide band of nonsense, form-fed again and after another long pause printed what looked like the top third or the word Windows.

Occasionally when printing from the iPhone it will display a low ink message -- even though it has a new set of HP cartridges -- and occasionally the PC will display an error saying it can no longer communicate with the printer.  When it does that I can still access the printer with the Windows printer feature or the HP web access so clearly the wireless network connection is still viable.

What do you think?  Has this year and a half old printer simply turned into an opportunity to act out the famous copied scene from Office Space?  Or has anyone else observed and/or experienced this and knows how I might fix it?

Thanks in advance for whatever help you can offer?

Howard

Redmond, WA

[VisionAiry]

I will do my best to help you out.  You have already said that you use this printer wirelessly but garbled text is often associated to a USB cord that is too long.  Do you have this printer plugged into something via USB?

Is your printer plugged directly into a wall outlet or a surge protector?  I strongly recommend trying a wall outlet that you know works to determine if this is being caused by a faulty surge protector or a malfunctioning outlet.

Here is a document about Slow Printing: Hardware since your printer seems to do this during your self tests from the front panel of the printer as well.  You have done a great job thus far on knowing what to do to fix this and the document is rather short.  I hope it helps you but if not let me know and we can look into other suggestions.

[Howard_Woodard · Accepted solution]

Thanks.  The article you included was one of the first ones I found when I first started researching this issue.  I also found articles on other ways of uninstalling as well as removing and cleaning the print head -- all of which I tried.

The printer is only connected to the network via wireless.  The power is plugged directly into a wall outlet that I have monitored for voltage level and wattage used.

The problem seems to be resolved now.  If it doesn't go back to its recalcitrant ways in a few days I'll consider this closed.

Here's what I did...

I was attempting to uninstall from the control panel.  I noticed that when I would get the ini file read error that all of the entries in the start menu had been removed but immediately after acknowledging the error it would roll back to the starting point and put everything back the way it found it.  I tried using task manager to kill msiexe at the error point but it would still roll back.

Then, for who knows what reason, I tried running uninstall directly from the start menu.  This time when it stopped and I killed the uninstall process it stayed stoped.  I then used Driver Fusion to remove all of the HP print drivers that it found followed by RevoUninstaller Pro to scan for and delete all of the associated registry entries and files followed by CCleaner to clean up the registry.  I'm not advertising or advocating, these were just the tools that I used.

After a reboot the printer appeared to be [finally] completely gone.  I installed the software again and this time it looks like it should and [so far at least] works correctly as well.  I don't think I have [intentionally] messed with this printer since I purchased it a couple years ago.  I don't know what caused it but it appears that I had multiple instances of competing drivers or layered software.

I made a clone of the disk and then tried again to uninstall the printer.  Even though it was immediately after a successful install and reboot it still would quit with the same "failed to read" error at the same place.  The error code in the event file is the same one that is used by other systems for "not enough contiguous disk space".  I have 384 GB free on a 1 TB drive and Norton reorganizes the disk weekly so that error number may be a red herring but I've yet to find anything to better inform me.  Whatever is causing that may also be why Restore won't complete successfully either.

Oh the joys of PC ownership.  You have to wonder how many PCs get junked every year simply because the owner wasn't technology-savvy enough and paying someone else is expensive with no guarantees of success.

Sigh...

[VisionAiry]

I am amazed that cleaning up the PC fixed the slow printing and garbled text but I am so glad you shared this with me.  I believe you have added a new level of troubleshooting to fix this.  Thank you for the detailed explanation.        -- Happy printing!

[Howard_Woodard]

I neglected to add one piece of information that probably contributed to the fix as well.

I had read somewhere that a faulty cartridge would cause the printer to pause as well other random erratic acts. I tried new cartridges but that didn't make any difference.

This printer has a removable print head so I took it out and carefully cleaned it -- what a messy job -- with distilled water and a microfiber towel. That could very well have helped with some of the slow and partial printing.

[VisionAiry]

Very glad you added that bit of information because I see different problems similar to this.  I want to share with them what you did and hopefully you not only fixed your specific problem but you can lend some more advice to others with problems like this. Thanks!

[AngelMyne]

I tried switching print spooling to print from computer, and it worked the first time but the printers back to stupid and it wont work again. I HATE HP now, their laptops and their printers are CRAP!

This began for me after the printers latest update. I will NOT be buying HP anything ever again! every time I go to use this printer now it wont function and every time I want to use the hp windows computers -regardless of the fact they worked fine when I closed the lids) they too dont work right. Im tired of HP.

My Mothers LOved her Epsoms Id recomend you just trash their garbage and get a new printer from Epsom.

Also, just go Apple. Apple never has any problems, while windows does nothing but crash and burn.

Tell ya what Im one pissed off customer!

[VisionAiry]

Sorry to hear that. Do you see an option in the tools to return the printer to factory defaults? If it's setup wirelessly you may have to set that up again and uninstall/reboot PC/then reinstall software if possible but I know if you're tired of troubleshooting and of this printer, I'm not even going to bother you with such until you're ready. And when you are I'm here for you. Just let me know if I can help.

[Leomacmac1]

I tried using the Windows 10 "built-in" print driver and skipping HP's buggy software.  Basically, just use "Add a printer" in your Devices and Printers control panel.

Here's what seems to be an overcomplicated description of how to do this: http://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-Officejet-6500-All-in-One-Printer-series---E7/3795309/model/3...

This has solved my problem for now.

[dor2000]

This problem also occurred to me with WiFi connection.

Using a USB connection, everything works right.

I tried to do all the things you've suggested here, but the problem still exists.
Are there any other solutions?