Documents Automatically Deleted Before Printing

[briancs8]

Hello,

I recently provided tech help to someone I know with their printer. While her new OfficeJet 3830 can print "internal" test print jobs, printing normally (including test prints) results in print jobs sent to the print queue, only to be quickly and automatically marked for deletion without any input from the user. Print jobs then disappear from the queue, and nothing is printed.

Her old printer was a HP Deskjet (2000-something, I forget the precise model) and it also had a very similar issue. After uninstalling and reinstalling the print driver for the DeskJet, and trying the HP repair utility found on hp.com, there was no change. I tried both wireless and USB connections, and it behaved the same either way. The printer showed up in Devices and Printers perfectly fine (online not offline, no driver issues, etc.). So I figured the printer was wonky and advised her to buy a new printer.

She bought a new OfficeJet 3830. And it has the problem described above: automatic print job deletions. I was sure to uninstall the old printer driver and software before installing the new printer driver and software. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled them with a reboot in between. I tried the HP repair utility again. I tried stopping the print spooling service in the administration panel, then emptied the printer spool folder. I changed the print spool folder to c:\spool to bypass potential permissions issues. Rebooting again, registry cleanup... none of this made a dent in the problem. Like the DeskJet, the new OfficeJet also showed up perfectly fine in Devices and Printers (online not offline, no driver issues, etc.).

Oddly enough, I found that her old and new printers printed fine from her second computer. She has two desktops, one with Windows 8.1 (which both printers do NOT work on) and one with Windows 10 (which both printers DO work on).

I cannot seem to find any more tasks to try from searching online. I am actually an experienced technician, but never saw anything this inexplicably wonky with a printer before. Hardware tests (PC Doctor) show a perfectly healthy Win 8.1 computer, and there are no symptoms of malware (I scanned with both MalwareBytes and Avast, she had some minor PUPs that are now gone) or any other system instability.

I'm going to visit her again in a few days, and I'm hoping to have a clue as to what to do to try to resolve this when I get there.

Thanks!

Peace,

Brian

[ShlomiL]

Hi Brian,

From your descripttion I would suspect a permission related issue as well which may cause a job to disppear with no responce.

As you mention you checked the spool folder for issues I would rather ensure the user have full reat & right permissions to the %temp% folder too.

If that doesn't make any difference it would also worth trying creating a new administrator account and test to deny any possible user profile curroption..

Please give it a try and let me know the results,

Shlomi

[briancs8]

Hi Shlomi,

Thanks. I'll give those ideas a try and will get back to you. 🙂

Peace,

Brian

[briancs8]

Hi Shlomi,

Thanks again for the help. Unfortunately, neither trick worked. I even thought to get permission for the temp folder from the new account I'd created and not just the old account. The printer continued to do the same thing from either account.

The person I helped decided to not bother trying anything else. Short of the enormous job of reinstalling Windows and all her programs, I can't think of anything else to do that could help. The fact that the printer works fine from her other computer would seem to rule out the printer itself being the culprit, after all.

I would be interested to know if you had any additional ideas that I could have tried if she wanted to proceed? Just for my own future reference.

Thanks again for the help anyway, I appreciate it.

Peace,

Brian