Missing Information on Print Outs

[css1323]

Good morning,

Has anyone ever seen or can reference an issue where an HP LaserJet printer does not print out all information sent from a PC?

Out of a 100-200 print outs with differing text at the top and bottom. 1 print out will be missing text JUST at the top.

-Reprinting same doc that had missing information before prints out fine

-Different drivers (Universal PCL5/PCL6/HP LaserJet M605/4200 drivers tried for example)

-Happens on multiple PCs

-Formatter board replaced

-Extra half GB of RAM added (totaling 1.5 GB)

-Link speed changed from 100T FULL to 10T FULL

--THIS worked for maybe two weeks but issue popped back up again randomly

--HP support a while back recommended we check this as well as the speed of our network

--Printer does share connectivity with two other printers on a hub

-Ran Disk Defrag/Disk Cleanup on one PC as a test as well

-MICR ink we need to use swapped out as well

-Firmware already latest

--Firmware Datecode: 20160820

-They use an AS400 printer session on PC, we also tried several recommended IBM printer models/drivers

I'd appreciate any help or ideas.

EDIT: Added more info.

[John_Getzke]

> Has anyone ever seen or can reference an issue where an HP LaserJet printer does not print out all information sent from a PC?

When something is missing from a document it is usually a driver or a document margins issue. 

> 1 print out will be missing text JUST at the top.

-Reprinting same doc that had missing information before prints out fine.

Sounds like this has something to do with how you are batching your jobs together as opposed to individuallly printing the documents.  Something may be getting left out from your batch print jobs.

An easy test would be to switch the print driver to a different language.  UPDs should be available for the m605 that can provide you access to PCL5, PCL6 and PostScript. 

[css1323]

When I think of driver issues, I thnk of garbled text, characters missing, nothing printing at all or getting an error at both client PC and printer itself. I did try a few different drivers, I've edited my original post with more info. Thanks.

[John_Getzke]

> --Printer does share connectivity with two other printers on a hub

Eliminate this hub from the troubleshooting equation and install the printer direct over USB.  Lets see if that has an impact on the problem or not.  Hubs as opposed to switches are not intellegent routing devices.  They broadcast everythign they recieve over all available ports at teh same time which can result in collisions.  Get enough collisions and I can see why the print stream may be getting impacted as the printing applications are not likely to check on the progress of each print command and start over again.

> -Link speed changed from 100T FULL to 10T FULL

This also seems strange to me.  Linkspeed should have nothing to do with printer data making it to the printer or not.  All it would impact is ths speed at which the jobs are transferred to the pritner.  Rulling out the hub in your scenario would eliminate this strange configuration change too.

[css1323]

I appreciate your input! Thanks!

One of our network techs didn't see any huge bottle necks on the line as well, hardly any bandwidth being used. At most, we saw usage spike up to 12 Mbps for a brief moment.

I'd love to try getting rid of hub, and even using USB, but it's a shared printer that's heavily used. I'd like to try moving printer to a dedicated drop for a bit if they let us.

In mean time, for kicks, I changed the link speed on one of the PCs' NICs that utilizies the printer the most to 10 Mbps speed. Funny enough there were no reported issues yesterday, again. You'd think if it were drivers the issue would happen with every print out, and it would be easy to reproduce. This is why I keep thinking it's network related. Perhaps I'm just not thinking clearly outside the box too, hehe.

[John_Getzke]

> I'd love to try getting rid of hub, and even using USB, but it's a shared printer that's heavily used. I'd like to try moving printer to a dedicated drop for a bit if they let us.

You will have to be clear if you are using an actual hub or not in your scenario.  Hubs are dumb network devices, the have very rare use cases outside of legacy print environments.  All a hub does is broadcast everything it recieves over all open ports.  They really shoulnt be depended on for anything critical.

What you should be using is a switch, which is a smart network device.  A simple unmanaged switch can be swapped out with your hub and still provide you with the same functionality after a little configuration.  A switch would eliminate the risk of losing data.

> One of our network techs

Get your network tech to swap the hub and install a switch or the proper network sharing connection configuration for your environment.  Whoever configured the hub may have gotten it to work in the past but now you are losing print data.  This is unaccepable, its time to configure the environment correctly.  Install a switch, give each printer an IP and configure the print queues accordingly.

[css1323]

---

@John_Getzke wrote:

> I'd love to try getting rid of hub, and even using USB, but it's a shared printer that's heavily used. I'd like to try moving printer to a dedicated drop for a bit if they let us.

You will have to be clear if you are using an actual hub or not in your scenario.  Hubs are dumb network devices, the have very rare use cases outside of legacy print environments.  All a hub does is broadcast everything it recieves over all open ports.  They really shoulnt be depended on for anything critical.

What you should be using is a switch, which is a smart network device.  A simple unmanaged switch can be swapped out with your hub and still provide you with the same functionality after a little configuration.  A switch would eliminate the risk of losing data.

> One of our network techs

Get your network tech to swap the hub and install a switch or the proper network sharing connection configuration for your environment.  Whoever configured the hub may have gotten it to work in the past but now you are losing print data.  This is unaccepable, its time to configure the environment correctly.  Install a switch, give each printer an IP and configure the print queues accordingly.

---

We finally got a dedicated data drop for the printer now on a Gigabit switch. We ran into the same kind of issue unfortunately, which is grinding my gears qutie nicely!

If we're sending fewer than 500 pages to print out, it seems we don't see issues. If it's more than that then that's when one page out of - let's say 600 - has half the information missing -- usually towards the end of the print job. There was  a bit more information on the bad print out this time but it may just be another fluke.

[css1323]

Also, the user's PC has an Intel Gigabit NIC which has options in Windows (Device Manager) to adjust Receive/Transmit buffer sizes, as well as an 'energy efficient ethernet' setting. I've increased the buffer sizes and turned off the energy option this morning. At the same time, I'm monitoring the PC's CPU usage remotely, and got a ping going to make sure PC stays online.

If there are any other ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

[John_Getzke]

> If we're sending fewer than 500 pages to print out, it seems we don't see issues. If it's more than that then that's when one page out of - let's say 600 - has half the information missing -- usually towards the end of the print job.

My only other thought would be a memory limit somewhere in the print process.  Are you going through a print server at all in this scenario or direct to the printer?

If you happen to have a print server it would be interesting to try and pause the print queue and compare what arrives when print jobs are less than 500 to those that are greater than 500.  If the print data is making it to the print server correctly then we can confirm everything is fine up until that point.  Pausing the print queue should help us observe if anything unusual happens to the print job from the moment it leaves the appliaction too.   If the print job is corrupted by the time it gets to the print server then we need to focus in that area.

Otherwise if the job looks good leaving the print server then that would suggest a memory issue on the printer itself.  Perhaps you are hitting the memory limits when you scale jobs up and beyond 500.  The printer may not be properly handling the scenario and ends up printing partial data.  You could try to set up a network monitor from the port going to the printer for confirmation and clues.  We would be looking for any evidence to suggest the print jobs are making it to the printer intact or not.

Windows print queues have an option under the Properties > Advanced Tab for print spool management.  You could play around with the feature to spool documents or not.  Try disabling print spooling and see if it has an impact.

[css1323 · Accepted solution]

Hello, again!

I nearly forgot to update my own post.

HP tech support kindly provided an interim HP firmware update. Since that update we haven't had any more issues. Thanks.