Printing only works for Administrator

[bennoberga]

I have two users on a PC, an Administrator account and a local user account.

Unfortunately printing only works for the Administrator account. The printer in use is the HP Officejet 4580.

What can not be the issue / what I have tried so far:

• The local user account has access to use the printer.
• The drivers are the newest directly from the HP website.
• Granted full access rights to the TEMP directory
• Tried to grant full access rights to /Windows/System32/spool (Windows prompts an error for some folders like /drivers even when the spool service is stopped).
• Reinstalled the printer completely

What I have noticed:

• Printing works if the application is run as Administrator 
• When setting to send prints directly to the printer without spooling then it works, but only until the PC is restarted. After restarting the PC all that is printed is a blank page. 

I've tried basically everything that can be found on the Internet to this topic and am hoping to find help here after nothing else helped. 

[DavidSMP · Accepted solution]

Hi @bennoberga,

Thanks for taking an interest in the HP Support Forums! Good day! 🙂 I reviewed the post about the printer not working on a standard user account but works in an administrator account. It will be a delight to assist you here. 🙂

Superb effort, brilliant troubleshooting and commendable diagnosis of the issue before posting.  Kudos to you on that score. 🙂  You are a valued HP customer and it is paramount to assist you here. I take it as a privilege to share this platform with you. 🙂

For better clarity and to assist you better I would require more information regarding this.

Has it worked before on a standard user account? Do you know?

Did any software update or windows update change things for the user account?

• For starters, please create a new standard user account and check if the printer works in the new user profile.
• Otherwise, You will need to give complete administrator account rights for the existing user account as it may be a limitation of the OS or a glitch that could have happened because of an update.
• If it has worked before try a system restore to an earlier time before the issue started from this link: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03327545 and follow the option "Restore your computer when Windows starts normally" Please perform the restore from the administrator account only.
• As a last resort, you could backup your files and reinstall windows and the printer software and check again if this resolves the issue.

Hope this helps.   I genuinely hope the issue gets resolved without hassles and the unit works great. 🙂  Please reach out for any issues and I'll always be there to assist you always. 🙂

To simply say thanks, please click the "Thumbs Up" button to give me a Kudos to appreciate my efforts to help.

 If this helps, please mark this as “Accepted Solution” as it will help several others with the same issue to get it resolved without hassles. 🙂

 Take care now and have a splendid week ahead. 🙂

[bennoberga]

Thanks for the hint. I had actually realized myself that I should try to create another account and see if it works for that one 😄

As it turns out there must have been some problem with the user account. 

I've created a new local user account and everything worked fine for that account so I just transferred all the files etc. and deleted the other local user account. 

Bit of work though and I do not know the reason behind this but at least it works now. 

Thanks for helping me to resolve this issue. 

For other users please also refer to the solutions offered in the Windows Community where I have asked the same question: 
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/printing-only-works-for-admini...

[Rick991]

I have also been successful in printing documents as a regular user by running the specific application in admistrator mode.  I've also coverted documents to PDF because PDF seems to print without issue.

HP diagnostics pass and will successfuly print a test page yet Windows diagnostic utilities fail to print a test page. Device Manager and Event logs do not show any issues.

It does appear to be a permissions issue. 

Historical Note:

Previous HP printer worked fine (connected directly to PC using a USB cable) but it had a mechanical failure.

Purchased a new printer which I also connected to the computer via a USB cable - same USB cable, same USB slot.

No changes to Windows 10 between last print from old printer and first attempted print with a new printer.

No changes to speciific applications.