Printer not centering a page for scaled printing

[Steve62151]

I have a HP ink tank 310 series printer. I often print articles from PDF files that I've downloaded, but find that it's best to scale the page size for the best fit to the page and so maximise the readability. The 'fit to page' option wastes too much space compared with using the best scaling. This has worked fine for months, as indeed it worked fine for years on my previous Canon printer. The preview screen in the printer software 'Print' dialog used to show the page centered, but for some reason now it's shows the preview box justified to the top-left, which means that no matter what I do with scaling I can;t get rid of all the waste white space around the article text in that area. Thai means I have to print things now around 5% smaller than was previously the case, which may not sound a lot but it makes a surprisingly big difference to the font size as printed and its legibility. I have no idea why this change happened, and I can't find any setting to center the preview in the 'Print' dialog again. I removed the printer and then reinstalled it but that didn't restore the preview centering, it's still at the top-left. Any suggestions how to get it centered again?

[Jay_G24 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Steve62151,

Welcome to the HP Support Community

I'd like to help!

I understand you are facing a scaling issue.

Let's try and uninstall the printer software from the root level on your PC and install the full feature printer software.

First, unplug the USB cable from the printer if present.

• Go to Control panel – Programs and feature – Select all the HP printer entries and uninstall them.
  • Now go to Control panel – Devices and printer – Select all the printer entries and remove the device.
  • Restart your computer.
  • Click the bottom-left Start button on desktop, type device manager in the search box and tap Device Manager on the menu.
  • Once in device manager, click on the view tab in the top & choose “Show hidden devices”.
  • Then from the device manager list, check the entries under “Printer” – If there are any entries, please right click and choose “uninstall” – In the confirm device un-install pop-up, make sure you select the box which says “Delete the driver software for this device". 
  • Also, check the entries under "printer queue" and "imaging devices" and repeat the same exercise. Delete any printer entry or any entry which says “Unknown device”.
  • Once done, close device-manger. Then press the "windows key" + "r" to get the "Run" window open - Type "printui.exe /s" and press enter.
  • Under print server properties, go to drivers - remove any entry there as well.
  • Again, go running window, type – “c:/programdata” – Go to Hewlett Packard folder, remove any printer related folders & files.
  • Once done you can try cleaning out your temporary files and cached files. You can try using automated applications like some cleaner software's that you can download from the internet.
  • Now restart your computer again.
  • Open the Run window again, type “services.msc” and press ok to get services window.
  • Scroll down to “Remote Procedure Call (RPC)” – right-click and go to properties. Make sure the service is started and startup type is “Automatic”.
  • Now scroll up and go to “Function Discovery Provider Host” – right-click and select properties – Change the startup type to “manual” and start the service.
  • Repeat the same exercise on “Function Discovery Resource Publication” as well
  • Windows image acquisition stop and restart the service 

Install all the available Windows updates

If it is been a while since you updated your Windows, that is the main reason why Windows says your HP printer driver is unavailable. Here are the steps how to do a Windows Update to install all accessible operating system update.

If you are accessing Windows 10, then these steps are for you.

1. Hit the Start menu and write an update. After that, click on the “Check for updates” option.
2. Tap on the “Check for updates” option.
3. After clicking on that option, Windows will install the updates automatically.
4. When Windows completes all its updates, start your computer again and attempt to print a file to check if your printer works.

Reinstall the drivers from the Software and drivers page

If the error persists, Try installing the printer with windows built-in driver

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

Click the “Yes" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping

[Steve62151]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the suggestion. I went through it step-by-step without any problem, but after reinstalling the printer at the end the problem still persists. I've tried attaching a screen shot below of the printer dialog to show you exactly what I mean. Originally, the print preview box surrounded by the pink lines was in the center of the grey area on the print dialog. That meant when I scaled the page to 82%, as shown, the excess white space was pushed outside the pink lines equally on all sides and I was left with the maximum amount of printable text and the minimum wasted white space.

As you can see now, though, the preview box is justified to the top-left and the excess white space around the article text has nowhere to go on those two sides, and some of the text is now outside the pink lines and will not be printed. I can get over that by scaling it to 78% but that significantly reduces the size of the text and its readability, as well as leaving me with a lot of waste paper where the white space at the top and left of the text have to be printed now.

Is there any way I can get that preview box surrounded by the pink lines centered in the grey area again?

Thanks,

Steve

[Steve62151]

Sorry, I had the PDF imager as default printer in that example, I hadn't reset the default to the HP printer yet, this is the actual example when the HP in tank 310 series is selected:

[Steve62151]

Well that seems to have been a case of one step forwards and three steps back. Not only did the reinstallation fail to fix the original problem, but the printer is now refusing to print duplex even when I've ticked everything related to it. In fact, the printer properties dialog looks completely different - much simpler and with fewer options - than it did before. Any suggestions how to get duplex printing back? Most of my printing is done that way so this is really not much use to me at the moment.

[Jay_G24]

Could you install the printer with windows driver and try printing?

Let me know!

[Steve62151]

When you say instal the Windows driver, I assume you mean to follow the link in your first reply here?

Try installing the printer with windows built-in driver

That's what I've done, and it's restored the printer to how it was before I made my first post on this problem, i.e. duplex printing working fine, the proper printer interface, but with the page-centering issue not fixed. You can see the Printer Properties dialog now is what I had originally, not the cut-down version shown in my post above:

There were a few odd things with the various bits of software that the update involved, specifically the Firmware update. That seemed to recognise the printer but refused to allow me to select it (tick the left-hand box) to do the update, as you can see below. Maybe that's OK, though, if the firmware is already up to date, I have no way of knowing?

In summary, then, after hours of uninstalling and reinstalling things, I'm back to exactly where I was 2 weeks ago, with the centering issue unresolved. It still looks like this on the preview screen:

with the preview not centered within the pink box and forcing me to lose 4% of the document size by downscaling it.

Thanks for your suggestions, anyway, do you have any other ideas how to fix the centering problem?