Printer printing garbage characters from PDF

[millerk]

Hi, work in a small office and share a printer with 1 other person on a regular basis and up to 4 others when needed.  It is a Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277.  Previously, I  had my comptuer plugged directly into the printer and everyone else connected wirelessly or just printed/scanned via a thumbdrive.  However, we got a new employee and when I turned around to help her intsall this printer on her computer, she had changed a bunch of settings on the printer.  When I plugged the printer back into my laptop, I could scan, but was no longer able to print, no matter what I did.  I tried unistalling and reinstalling everything and then my printer spooler completely stopped.  My company has very strict hardware and software install rules, and everything must be very secure.  We must be connected to our company network through VPN to do almost everything but we are not usually allowed to be connected through VPN to print so we typically have to sign off and on VPN all day, depending on how much we need to print (which is a nightmare).  So I spent more than 3 whole days with our very best IT people figuring out a solution to this issue and what they came up with was they would send me an extra laptop whose sole purpose is to be a "printer server" meaning we made the Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277 into a network printer and connected it directly to the new laptop.  That way, anyone that wants to use it needs to simply install the drivers and find it on the network and print.  Doing this allows me to now print from my lapteop, while connected through VPN, which is ideal. So I thought the nightmare was over...    

But now I have a new problem: Whenever I print from a PDF file, which I do many many times a day, the printer will often (not all the time) start spitting out page after page of garbage characters.  It's always one line of text, and there is almost always a smily face, letters, numbers, puncutation, hearts, greek characters, etc... and it WILL NOT STOP unless I turn the printer all the way off. I have tried cancelling the print on the computer and on the printer and it just keeps going.  It also usually (eventually) prints the document requested.  There have been no changes to the types of documents I'm printing or the fonts or anything like that.  I have tried selecting "Print As Image" on my advanced screen and the issue persists. It does not appear to be happening with anything but PDF documents (Word documents print fine).   Yesterday I rebooted my computer and I think that helped, but then today the issue started again. I am just baffled at what could be going on here and I don't want to have to spend hours troubleshooting this or restarting my machine everyday so I'm looking for ideas on what the problem could be.  I have been told my computer needs to be reimaged eventually and probably needs a new memory stick, because it is old, but I have a HUGE print job I need to complete this week and was hoping to get through that first. 

[Copier-Pro]

This could be a error on the pdf reader u are using.Try installing a earlier version of the pdf viewer might just solve this problem.Hope this will help.

[Nishant16]

Thank you for using the HP forum.

Error : garbage printing

Problem Description: junk printing

The possible cause could be: documents stuck in queue ,firmware , reinstall drivers ,

Corrective Action:

1)If printer is connected through Usb you have to unplug the usb cable and check whether internal reports are able to print from printer it means Hardware is fine issue is while printing from computer

2)Go to RUN option > SPOOL> PRINTERS >Clear Documents which are stuck in Queue

clear all documents not even 1 document should be in queue.

3)If still issue from PDF document first try printing  Test page from printer drivers and other applications (like ms word ,wordpad) if it is printing fine try changing the driver and use UPD PS driver download from this site www.hp.com/go/upd and install Drivers and check

I think so issue may get resolved

4)If issue arises intermittent try updating Firmware from below link :

https://support.hp.com/in-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-color-laserjet-pro-mfp-m277-series/708...

But it is important printer

Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.

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[syedumar1]

Hi,

Thank you for posting.

please download and install PS drivers that will fix the issue. please find the PS drvier link as follows

for win 64 bits :

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/UPD/4157320/model/4157320/swItemId/ds-993...

for win 32 bits

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/UPD/4157320/model/4157320/swItemId/ds-993...

I hope this will fix the issue.

I am an HP Employee

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[Pushpakr]

The solution is to use a universal driver.

Here is the XP x86 one:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18...

Here is the Windows 7  64 bit one:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18...

[muj851]

Hi,

Try the following steps

1. Go to Device and printer.
2. Select the printer and click on Printer Properties.
3. Click on Preference -> Go to Advanced Tab
4. You will see an Option called "Print Data Optiomization"
In the dropdown you see Optimize to Raster & "Optimize for Text and Vector" toggle b/w these two options.
Click on apply and ok to save the current setting.
Open the PDF file in Adobe ->Try printing pdf document to check.