Why does my hp 8600 plus printer spit out an extra (blank) page after printing a single page?

[michealbeethove]

OK, got a warrantied re-conditioned replacement for the 8600 Pro Plus that was printing phantom pages.  Have to admit that once HP realized that my problem with the printer was real they responded quite quickly.  The replacement has been installed and it does not print an extra blank page.  For now......

[johnsonchiroj]

Anyone figure this out? Keeps doing it when printing from word 2010.  Very annoying issue.  It should be fixed a firmware or software fix but am all up to date.  I'm wondering if this is a double sided glitch since it holds the paper as if it is drying a page and instead of pulling the page back in it spits it out and with another page. 

[johnsonchiroj]

I seemed to of fixed it, hopefully permanently.  I noticed in word there was a second printer it was labeled with 8600 and some random letters and numbers.  It didn't show up in the printer panel.  I deleted the main 8600 printer in the devices panel and the second "phantom" printer showed up in my list??  I deleted it but it was still showing up in word and reappeared when I restarted in the device panel.  I selected the printer and pressed the see whats printing button and there was a list of really old documents, I cleared them out and was able to finally get rid of the phantom printer completely.  

From that panel I added the printer manaully(without removing or reinstalling it with the hp software).  I found the driver in the list and it recommended I keep the new driver so I did and am now not getting the extra pages, for now.  I have no idea what was going on or if this fully corrected the issue.

[mike78]

I think I have solved my problem. I tried the repair option mentioned above with no change. I then uninstalled and reinstalled the driver for the printer with still no change. Like I mentioned before the phantom page only manifests while printing in excel. The spreadsheet I was using had the page breaks manually set to fit the information into 1 page. I remade the spreadsheet and made the cells fit into excel's predetermined page size and "violla," no more phantom page. I hope I was able to explain myself well enough.

[johnsonchiroj]

Its back for me after all that work I've tried reinstalling drivers, repairing them, and removing and adding them manually.  Seems to work for a while but then all of a sudden I hear the printing stop and its back.  I doubt this is a hardware issue since pdf printing is unaffected.  Mainly affects office software.

[michealbeethove]

It more than likely is a firmware, not a hardware, problem.  The reconditioned 8600 Plus that HP sent me under warranty has printed dozens of jobs without a single Phantom Page.  Any other suggested fix by HP did not solve the issue, only a replacement worked.

[arisoninc]

Thanks, Bill_3297! That was to be my next step after trying (unsuccessfully) to update drivers.

Before I go further, if in Excel you're getting a so-called phantom page it's most likely because your spreadsheet is encroaching on the margins. My solution was to go to the top tabs (I'm using office '07) and select 'Page Layout', then under 'Margins' whatever you set will automatically display a dotted line onscreen to show you where your cutoff is. If your spreadsheet is too big it will, however, show a blank page at the end of your document in print preview so it's not actually a "phantom page" but a formatting error. 

As for my printer, the issue I was having wasn't the page thing (at first). The printer worked fine for a few months after purchasing it and had no issues until it was constantly giving me the error "Printer Not Connected" whenever I tried to print any document (it's set up on wireless). This was, to be polite, extremely frustrating. Sometimes it would work fine and others it refused to connect even though the network test page would tell me the signal was excellent and everything passed. And then sometimes, even after giving me the "Printer Not Connected" error, I'd go to the store and return to find my documents printed. Grrrrr.

(As an aside, I also had an issue with printing docum ents from Google Chrome where the printer wouldn't print if I used the system dialog but it would if I used the Chrome print dialog. And when I'd use the Chrome print dialog the print job wouldn't show up in the queue but that might be normal. I could also, during this time of tribulation, email myself the document to the @hpeprint.com address I'd set up and it'd print after a considerable--10 to 15 minutes or more--delay. Printer not connected my foot.)

I reasoned it must be the laptop and some kind of software issue so I allowed the computer to troubleshoot itself and download its own drivers to remedy the issue. Was THAT a mistake! It was then that immediately and without fail after EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT I'd print (Excel, Word, Adobe) it would wait 5-10 seconds and spit out a blank page, even with documents I'd printed the day before with no such issue. I searched around online, found this thread and took Bill's suggestion to repair the software with the original installation disk and voila! Both problems are fixed (at least since yesterday but we'll see how long it lasts). 

I suspect there may have been some issue with Windows Updates my computer is constantly wanting to download where some security update goofed up the protocol controlling the wireless connection to the printer, and repairing the software just set things right.  I'll mention also that no amount of restarting the computer, printer, router or modem in any order or combination made one lick of difference in the wireless connectivity problem; it just worked whenever the heck it decided to. Oh, and I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate on an HP Elitebook (HP!). 

I'll also say here that I'm disappointed in the lackluster response from HP, the inability of the engineer to address the issue and the subsequent silence following Bill's post about the solution. It was literally my next step to reinstall the software but I decided to do a quick search to see if anyone else had found a solution before I wasted any more time on it. I'm kinda surprised repairing the software wouldn't be one of HP's first suggestions once print dialog and formatting errors were ruled out. Software conflicts arise regularly because really, who can predict how all programs will interact with all others (especially when they all want to automatically start themselves up and run in the background and not everyone knows how to prevent them from doing so). But since HP did weigh in, I'm disappointed in their disappearance from the thread after only a couple posts. Maybe they fired that engineer...? Anyway...

[mike78]

On a side note. My issue with EXCEL was definately a phatom page issue. In print preview it would NOT show a blank page to print with the jobs yet another blank page would feed out seconds after the print job was done.

[johnsonchiroj]

You're correct.  If it were just a extra page like HP insists it would show up in preview AND be printed without holding the page several seconds.  This issue is a shame because it is a great printer.  Its annoying enough to affect workflow but not enough to exchange or replace it.

[arisoninc]

All the reviews were positive and it was featured in more than one 'Top 10' list of best printers. I'm happy with it despite the recent aggravation and for now it seems to be fixed.

I'll keep the install disc close at hand just in case.