Problems printing with HP printer from Mac OS

[mjh2000har]

I recently bought a new HP laser printer: the M281fdw laserjet pro printer. I have recently been having troubles getting it to print from my mac computer and I am pretty certain it is a driver issue or an issue with something on my mac but I have no idea how to fix it and it is really frustrating.

Here is everything that I have noticed, and everything I have tried so far to try and fix it:

When I print from preview, or word, or any other program in MacOS the print job sends to the printer, then the printer seems to whirl up and make some noise (maybe the document feeder?) and then stops - on my mac it just says printing and on the printers screen it just says printing. It either takes a very long time to print or just cycles like this indefinitely and dosen't print whatever I want to print even though it says printing. I thought it was just an issue with preview but I also have the issue with word and adobe acrobat so it must be a system wide issue where it sends the print job and it just cycles. Every now and then after I restart everything and turn everything on and off it does actually print straight away as it should, but then it eventually reverts back to the stubborn issue described above. Even weirder it sometimes happens with some documents but not with some others - there dosen't seem to be any correlation with the type of documents it wants to print and dosen't want to print! Makes no sense!

Now to try and fix the issue I have tried the following: I printed a test page - it came out fine and everything was normal, I am 99.9% this is NOT a hardware issue with the printer. I also tried printing wirelessly by sending the document via email to the printers dedicated email address I got upon setup - that was fine and it printed fairly quickly, succeeding everytime, making me realise that this is probably a driver issue on MacOS. It also seems to print fine from the HP app on my phone so it is definitely isolated to my computer. 

As such, I tried reinstalling everything with HP easy start. I reset the printer to default settings and also reinstalled my drivers, restarted my computer, deleted any old drivers and made sure every piece of software and my system were up to date - I still have the same problem. I have tried all the standard 'fixes' to software problems including removing the printer from my system preferences and adding it as an airprint printer, as the printer name and as secure airprint. Funnily enough, when I add it as an airprint printer it does print all documents fine - however occasionally when I go to print PDF's it now just prints a blank page out! So annoying!

I am lost for solutions now as I've tried everything you would instantly recommend hearing the problems I have had. Maybe this is a driver issue that you need to refer to your software developers as I am running Mojave which is obviously quite a new update to MacOS.

Thank you, any help for this weird, annoying issue, would be appreciated! I love my HP printer and I hope I can get it to print normally soon! I will be phoning HP support tomorrow to see if they can do anything about this

[senan6806]

@mjh2000har

A warm welcome to HP forums! This is a great place to get support, find answers and tips to your technical queries.

As per this document, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw printer is compatible with macOS 10.14 Mojave. Resetting the printing system and adding compatible driver may resolve the issue. Resetting the printing system removes all printers and scanners from the printers queue and clears all print jobs and print settings from the system, including printers and scanners that are not from HP. Resetting the printing system can be useful for troubleshooting printing problems, but you need to add all of your printers and scanners back to the list when you are finished.

Before you reset the printing system, try updating Mac OS and printer firmware. You may use the steps available here to update Mac OS, you can download and install the latest firmware update for your printer from here.

If you are still having printing issues after updating Mac OS and printer firmware, use the steps below to reset the mac printing system and add compatible print driver:

1.) Click the Apple menu, and then click System Preferences.

2.) Click Printers & Scanners, Print & Scan, or Print & Fax.

3.) Right-click (or Control + click) anywhere inside the Printers window, and then click Reset printing system.

4.) Click Reset or OK.

5.) Turn off the printer, wait 5 seconds, and then turn on the printer.

6.) Wait until the printer is idle and silent.

7.) Click the Apple menu, click System Preferences, and then click Print & Scan or Printers & Scanners.

8.) Click the plus sign , click Add Printer or Scanner, click the printer name.

9.) Click the Use or Print Using menu, select AirPrint in the pop-up menu. Then click Add.

10.) Open a document or photo, click File, and then click Print.

Let me know how it goes!

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution and Kudos buttons, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!
Have a great day!

[bartdud]

Hello,

I've observed exactly the same problem with my printer and macOS Mojave 10.14.14. The printers works in proper way with Windows 10, Android, printing from USB and so on and so forth.

However - with my Mac, it doesn't work fine.

The only way I can print sth is to convert it to PDF. PDF's are always printable. When I try to print e.g. photo as JPG file - printer starts doing sth, I see the message like "Connected to the printer", "Printing", and ... nothing happens. I can wait and wait and wait and wait, and ... nothing.

I have 2 laptops with macOS Mojave, the same problem occurs on both.

I did the reset of printing service and the printer drivers was reinstalled.

Would be nice if someone from HP could help me.

Best

[bartdud]

The workaround for this problem is to use AirPrint/AirPrint secured instead of native printer driver provided by hp

[bd00]

I have a similar problem with the same printer.

It seems that the printer has problems printing some documents with color content. It will print all the B/W pages, but will give an error and stops printing on the first page with a color graphic. The error is:

Warning: InternalError 00

File Name: PDFSender_interp.c

Line nuymber 1789

error information: undefined file name

If I print from Word or print a PDF from Preview, it gives the same error. But if I print from Adobe Acrobat Reader, it will always print correctly. So it must be a driver issue in Mojave. I did not have this problem before Mojave, although the printer is only a few months old.

I can provide a single page PDF sample that will not print except using Adobe Acrobat Reader. There does not seem to be a way to insert a document here. But page 99 of this arXiv document (https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.01876#) displays this error. Many PDF documents with embedded color graphics (usually vector as opposed to bitmap) fail to print.

[EliW]

I am currently having the exact same issues.  The printer worked fine for 6 months, then started having this issue.   And have been on chat with an HP Agent for 30 minutes now getting nowhere.  So I started googling and found this page.

There is one very specific difference in my case.  I'm getting the same effect (spinning up then nothing happening).   I'm getting the same PDFSender_Interp.c error message ...

However I have found that this has nothing to do with drivers.   As this not only happens on both MacOS and ChromeOS here, but I went deeper trying different printing methods (wireless, WiFidirect, cable) ... it will print pure images fine.  But any document gets that PDF error.

So I tried putting both a JPEG and PDF copy of the same file on a USB key and directly plug it into the printer.  If I print the JPEG, it prints fine.  When I print the PDF (so no computer, no drivers involved), It gives the PDFSender_Interp.c error.

So this appears to be a software bug in the printer itself.   Why it's only manifesting 'sometimes', I don't know.    But the online chat agent I'm working with keeps trying to tell me to reinstall a driver #facepalm