Officejet 6700: Poor print alignment on second page when duplex printing

[dephead2004]

Hi I have experimented a little more and find that greyscale and colours  print perfectly. I think we can safely say that it is just the black cartridge that is problematic and wierdly, as you know,  only on the second side of duplex printed paper.

Customer support as patient as ever have sent me a new PSU. It has made no difference.

Did you ever resolve your problem?

[dephead2004 · Accepted solution]

Dear Rank_outsider,

Thanks to the great folks around here. There is a workaround. I submit it here for your info:

There were two main suggestions as to how to proceed. I did not uninstall the "bloatware" and revert to basic drivers for the HP Officejet 6700 Premium but I did install the HP Deskjet 6980 series drivers according to the procedure listed in this link http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Issues-Troubleshooting/HP-7510-Duplex-Problem-y-axis-scaling/t... and repeated below with some mods to include the activation of the duplexer within the one set of instructions.

And do you know what? It WORKS! The ghosting on the second side of all duplex printed pages disappears to be replaced with lovely clear crisp print. At the moment all other functions including scanning seem unaffected and function as normal although obviously the new driver (HP Deskjet 6980 series) makes the Properties sheets look different.

In my environment I also have 3 networked XP machines connected wirelessly to the printer via the router and a Win7x64 PC connected by ethernet to the same router . This meant downloading and installing from the HP driver webpage the HP Deskjet 6980 series driver for the XP PCs not the Win 7 x64 as these were no present. 

I modified the routine a little and reproduce it below to help others. A/c to the original post this was provided by HP Tech Support. Why no one is Support services seems to know about it or the drivers haven't been fixed I shall never know.

First off you will want the printer already available to the computer before proceeding.

 For Win7 PCs (XP is similar but not identical)

1. Go to Start => Device and Printers => then click on the button labeled "Add Printer" on the top left corner of the device window.
2. Click the button "Add Local Printer" (Choose this option if you don't know your setup)
3. Select the radio button "Use an existing port"
4. On the dropdown list select the option  eg CN115130TP05JW  but use the correct name for YOUR PRINTER port which is the serial number for your printer (do not use the fax entry)
5. Now in the Manufacture list to the left select "HP"
6. On the Printer list to the right select "HP Deskjet 6980 series (HP)"
7. After the driver installs go into the "Device and Printers" window and right click the newly added "HP Deskjet 6980 series" and select "Printer Properties" on the dropdown list.
8. Go to the "Advanced" tab, and in droplist next to the "Driver" label select "HP Deskjet 6980 series".

9. Click the "Apply" button - the configuration window should change it's shapea little.

   10. In the HP Deskjet 6980 Properties window click on the "Device Settings" tab on the top of the window.

   11. In the list of settings look for "Duplex Unit (for 2-sided printing)" and select it.

   12. Once highlighted select from the dropdown list "Installed";

   13. Once finished press Apply

   14. Now go into whatever you were using to print the documents and select the "HP Deskjet 6980" as your printer. Enable Duplex printing and you should see the pages print out correctly.

   15. You can also change the name of the printer in the "General" tab. I changed it in mine to "HP Officejet 6700 with HP Deskjet 6980 Driver to fix shadowd Duplex Printing".

   I had a little problem in that for some reason in the document (eg Word/ .pdf etc\) printer properties dialogue box under the Effects tab my radio button was mysteriously set on 20% so until I changed it it was hard to see that there was no ghosting.

   So after 1 complete rebuild of the original printer with parts sent from HP support services since Novembe 2012, an escalation to higher powers within HP (no reply yet) and a new printer from A....n, VisionAiry has pointed me towards a solution that I had tried with DJ 450 drivers to no avail after a post from Shane_R dated last year.

   So thanks to you and also to 007OHMSS who was working on this problem as well as to the original posters

   All I can say is it worked for me and I am so grateful to all on this forum for ensuring that I did not doubt my eyes and sanity looking at any more duplexed printed shadowed/ghosted print and willing them to be what they weren't.

   So Kudos all round and thanks again 

[dephead2004]

You may also wish to know HP Customer Care's response today:
I wish to inform you that the HP 6980 drivers that you are using are generic drivers and might not provide the complete functionality of the unit.
We have received a confirmation from our engineering team that this is a known issue with this unit and hence we will be escalating this case to our exceptions team.
You would receive a call from the concerned department to address the issue. Your patience and co-operation is appreciated.

!!!!

[8lives]

Thank you dephead2004 for the work around info.

[Rank_Outsider]

Thank you dephead2004 for taking the time to post a workaround.  I am still experiencing this issue, so will try out your workaround and if it works for me I will let you know.

Hopefully HP can get around to repairing the actual drivers for this printer soon.

[dephead2004]

I see that you use XP. I do too on a subsidiary PC so I can confirm that the workaround is effective . The instructions are just slightly different.
Yes we need the driver people to sort it. The printer has been sold for a year. And why did Customer services not know about it??

[Rank_Outsider]

Hi dephead2004,

I tried your workaround, but using a combination of your instructions and the ones located in this other post on how to assign alternate printer drivers for different versions of Windows (which I only found thanks to your post).  I couldn't find the Deskjet 6980 driver on my XP system (the Windows Update button was no help either), so I used the Deskjet 990c driver instead.

It solves my problem - no more ghosting.  What's more, it's printing the pages with what I thought were smaller margins than they should be, but when measured them with a ruler, found that they are now printing with the correct margin dimensions!  That is to say, your workaround has alerted me to the fact that the 'proper' 6700 drivers also seem to be printing slightly shrunken pages (horizontally and vertically), which I hadn't noticed before (even when set to the correct A4 paper size).

I haven't extensively tested the new driver - there is some evidence that colour reproduction may be different, and I don't know about the other features, but I know have more options than I did before - thanks to you and the other posters who have contributed.

[Rank_Outsider]

I forgot to say - I didn't need to activate the duplexer when I switched to the 990c driver, it just worked for me.  Essentially I just needed to follow the equivalent steps 1-6 for it to work for me.

[dephead2004]

That's really great news. It makes it all worth while.

[dephead2004]

OK bit of a problem with the 6980 drivers. Colour printing is only reproduced in Greyscale 😞

Did you hae this trouble with the 990c drivers?