print jobs disappear from queue and nothing is ever printed

[ninasan]

Hi,

After several months of effortless printing and scanning with our Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477, I can no longer print using my laptop, which has Windows 10 (64). It has a wireless connection to the printer through wifi. Scanning still works fine though. I didn't change anything on my laptop. I can print using my husband's deskop pc or any mobile device like tablets of smartphones. 

What happens when I try to print any document, is the fact that the document is sent to the print queue and within a second the queue passes from 1 document pending to 0 documents, without the document being printed. 

I removed the HP software and reinstalled it, with no results unfortunately. I've contacted HP by phone and I talked to a technician for almost 2 hours. He took over the screen but wasn't able to solve the problem. He closed the case stating the printer worked correctly... I don't agree: this is a wirelless network printer and it should work as such, we bought it for that purpose. The problem seems to be the laptop, which is very well maintained though: it has the latest Windows udpates, is free of virusses or network problems. The guy from HP suggested that I should format the hard disk of my laptop and reinstall everything, I don't know... this smeems quite a drastic step to me.

I hope I can get some help or suggestions here... Thanks in advance to anyone who could help me out of this major issue!

Kind regards,

Catharina

[dansdaduk]

I don't know the answer to your problem - diagnosing such issues is often quite difficult (and I have no experience of wireless connection issues).

I would agree with your comment about "... format the hard disk of my laptop and reinstall everything, I don't know... this smeems quite a drastic step to me ...".

I'd go further than saying its a drastic step - I'd say that, unless there are obviously other major faults with your system, this is totally unnecessary, extremely disruptive, and with no definite chance of solving your current problem.

I'd say that there are three broad possibilities:

• The printer driver is crashing when trying to generate the print job - hence a complete job is not available to be sent to the (configured port of the) device.

• A complete print job is generated, but there is a connection issue - a bad connection, or perhaps the credentials are wrong, and it is sent to another address (which may or may not exist).

• A complete print job is generated and received by the printer, but (for some unknown reason) the printer does not recognise it as valid.

The first thing to do would be to attempt to find the point of failure, out of the above three steps.

For the first step, switch on the "keep printed documents" option in the Printer Properties:

This should cause the raw print jobs to be retained; it should result in a pair of files (nnnn.SHD and nnnn.SPL) being kept in the %windows%\system32\spool\PRINTERS folder for each generated print job:

The internal format of these  files may vary according to settings in the driver, and I can't pretend to be able to successfully analyse all of these, but it may show us if the job (in whatever format) was completed.

If the 'open' the .SPL file in NotePad, most of the content will appear to be 'gobbledygook', but you should be able to make out some 'indicators'.

For example, if the beginning of the file shows the two characters "PK", it may (but, of course, may not be!) possible to open the file using your browser.

If so, it may show the original source document - if this is complete, it is an indication that the first step (the generation of the print job) succeeded.

If it does not start with "PK", post an image here of the NotePad window (use the "Insert/edit image" button ) ; note that it may be hours before any such image is "approved" and becomes visible to others.

[dansdaduk]

... and to try to eliminate the connection issue, is it possible that you could (temporarily) connect the device via a wired Ethernet connection?

[dansdaduk]

... and another way to determine if the print job is properl;y generated would be to print (a small, sanitised data) document, but select the 'print to file' option in the Print dialogue.

Analysis of the resultant named .prn file should indicate if the generated print job was complete or not.

Assuming that you are using a PCL5 or PCL6 (PCL XL) printer driver, you can attempt the analysis using the PRN File Analyse tool in the PCL Paraphernalia application, available via http://www.pclparaphernalia.eu

[ninasan]

Hi Dansdaduk,

First of all, thanks a lot for being so helpful!

I followed your first step and was able to find the SPL-file. When opening it in Notepad, I can see it does start with PK. I'm not able to open the file in my browser however.

Following this step did change something in the print queue: the print jobs don't disappear anymore but stay (stuck) in the queue (status: sent to printer)

[ninasan]

I connected the printer via a wired ethernet connection during my conversation with the HP technician last week. Unfortunately, this didn't help... the problem stayed the same.

[ninasan]

I did this and the prn file I generated was analysed by the PCL tool, but the file size is apparently zero. That doesn't seem to be a good sign...

[dansdaduk]

>> ... change something in the print queue: the print jobs don't disappear anymore but stay (stuck) in the queue (status: sent to printer) ...

Yes - that's because those .spl/.shd files are retained, rather than deleted after use, when "keep printed documents" is enabled.

You shoule be able to delete the requests, either from the queue window, or by (administrator?) deleting the .spl/shd files.

... and disabling the option means that future files will not be retained.

[dansdaduk]

>> ... the prn file I generated was analysed by the PCL tool, but the file size is apparently zero ...

You should be able to check the file size of a file via its properties: for example:

If it is the case that the file is actually zero size, it implies something within the application, or printer driver, or the interaction between them, is failing and hence the print job is not being generated.

Does this happen with all applications?

How about a simple NotePad document?

Otherwise, perhaps time to attempt use of a different printer driver?

Do you know which driver you have installed and in  use?

Look at the Printer Properties dialogue; for example (albeit for a different printer model):

[dansdaduk]

>> ... the SPL-file. When opening it in Notepad, I can see it does start with PK. I'm not able to open the file in my browser however ...

Try opening it with the XPS-Viewer application, if you have that on your system (Start menu -> Windows Accessories | XPS Viewer).