MFP M177 PCLmS The system does not support the command requested

[ShortCircuit001]

I support a local business that is using an older print server running Windows Server 2016. They have an HP M177fw color laser printer that works fine on Windows 10. However, whenever we try to print from the print server we get an error "The system does not support the command requested". Nothing I can find in any logs or events that relates to the error, so I'm not 100% sure where it is coming from, and need some help tracking it down.

First troubleshooting step was of course to completely remove the drivers and reinstall them, which didn't help. What's most odd is that during some web searches on this problem, I found an old thread for a similar problem where an HP rep replied to the post and mentioned that .NET runtime was required for the drivers to operate correctly.

The original thought was that because Win10 has .NET runtime installed by default, but Server 2016 does not, installing .NET might solve the issue. I installed the .NET 4.5 runtime, and the printer started working. Now to the odd part - the printer worked normally for several months, then the server was rebooted after an extended power outage depleted the UPS batteries. After the reboot, we're right back to the same error.

At one point, we also tried an HP universal driver thinking it might have better server OS support, the driver appeared to work without errors, but print jobs sent via the driver simply never printed. Any suggestions for a workaround or a way to track down the source of this error would be appreciated.

I am trying to convince the business to both upgrade their server to a new system as well as get rid of  some of these cheap home printers and get something more suitable to a business. However, they are on an extremely tight budget, and I'm not sure that I will have any success, so would like to be able to get this printer working so they can use it.