Issues printing with newly installed LJ M506 Enterprise

[SnJack]

Our tech person installed a new LJ printer last Thursday. He had issues installing it from the CD, and ended up installing drivers directly from the HP website. We did a few test prints and everything seemed to be working fine.

The next day (Friday), we tried to print regularly, but it wouldn't print unless paper was loaded into the manual feed tray, which is not the way  it printed the day before (it printed directly from Tray 2 or Tray 3). Our tech person changed a few of the settings, and it seemed to be working fine again.

This week I noticed the printer doing something odd. If you only want to print a 1-page document, it seems to print fine. If you want to print anything more than that, it will print alternate pages from Tray 2 in reverse order (for ex. in a 5 pg document it would print page 5 first, then page 3, and then page 1). In order to print the other two pages (page 2 and page 4), you have to press the OK button on the manual feed alert that appears after it prints the three initial pages. Only then will it print the other 2 pages, but it prints them from Tray 1. So it's using two separate trays to print a single document, but it's printing alternate pages (if that makes any sense!).

I tried to disable the manual feed tray, and still had the exact same issue. I tried to set Tray 2 as the default tray, but I'm not sure if I did that correctly, because it doesn't directly state "Set Tray (#) as default." I've loaded paper into the manual feed tray (Tray 1) and just left it alone in hopes that it would just print all pages

I've ensured that the paper size matches what is in the settings for each tray, and it still prints funny. I've gone through the settings point by point to see where the issue is, and I can't seem to figure it out. I work in a public library, and for the last two days people have been paying for prints that aren't getting, or someone from staff has to walk to the printer every 10 minutes to press the button to initiate printing.

I contacted HP yesterday, and they informed me that the warranty for the printer had expired in 2010 or 2011, even though the printer was purchased brand new in November 2017.

I know this problem seems convoluted, but anyone have any ideas? I've never had an issue like this before. Every other printer we've had just prints automatically from Tray 2 (or Tray 3 if Tray 2 is empty). I've never had a business-class printer need to be manually loaded as the default.

[dansdaduk · Accepted solution]

>> ... it will print alternate pages from Tray 2 in reverse order (for ex. in a 5 pg document it would print page 5 first, then page 3, and then page 1). In order to print the other two pages (page 2 and page 4), you have to press the OK button on the manual feed alert that appears after it prints the three initial pages. Only then will it print the other 2 pages ...

These symptoms imply that the printer driver is assuming that the target device does not include a built-in automatic duplex unit, and is generating a print job which uses a 'manual duplex' mechanism (where one side of each sheet is printed first, then, after the printed sheets are reinserted in (a) paper tray, the reverse sides are printed).

The Laserjet M506x model should have a duplex unit, which it appears that the printer driver doesn't know about.

The 'automatic discovery' feature used by some drivers on installation (or update) doesn't always work; ensure that the driver knows that a duplex unit is present on the printer (assuming that one is present):

• For the printer instance in question, bring up the Printer properties dialogue.
• Select the Device settings tab.
• Ensure that the duplex unit is set to Installed rather than Not installed.

You'll probably need to be logged in with administrator credentials in order to change the device settings.

[SnJack]

Thank you for your help. You pointed me in the right direction. It turns out that the default printer preferences for each workstation changed when the new printer was installed. It was defaulting to 2-sided printing. Changed those settings and it seems to be printing correctly now.

Thanks again.