Printing - Can't open "/private/var/spool/cups/tmp/..."

[WilliamGuion]

Apologies - had to take a time out for dinner.

Okay, downloaded HP Easy Start. 1st problem, both 8710s show up but no way to distinguish between them. Yes, it does show what might be a serial number, but I don't have that information recorded. So I took a guess and picked one. Installed the printer and scan software. Good news, printed the test page and it seems to be going to the correct printer. Also, not getting the Can't Open message. Bad news, the test page didn't print on either printer. Error message (from the correct printer) is printer is not responding. I've had this situation occasionally in the past and a re-boot of computer and printer resolves it (for a while). I'm going to reboot and will check back with you soon.

[WilliamGuion · Accepted solution]

Good news. It is printing again. Thanks for all your help.

[rendina]

The same here. Stopped printing today suddenly. On both mac computers we have in the house. Reset printer settings, reinstalled drivers. Restarted. Updated my mac. Restarted. Still an error- a bit different now - "filters" failed. And no printing.

[BryanCustomPure]

The solution is to download this package which will update drivers AND THE CERTIFICATE:
ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-...

Easy Admin did nothing. Easy Startup did nothing. 5.1 drivers did nothing. This worked for me!

[wrenjim]

The Url posted by the previous user resulted in this error message:
Not Found: The requested URL /pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg was not found on this server.

So, the solution did not work for me. My next step is to search for solutions from HP, not this community.

[BryanCustomPure]

Delete the weird character after the ".pkg" part. I don't know how that ended up there. The link is working on my end from two separate networks. 

[SammyH1]

I can confirm I am dealing with the same problem.  And it started with a Catalina software update from Apple.  I am getting a lot of malware notifications, all seemingly related to the printer.  I will try the reset approach you suggest...but have my concerns something bigger is going on that HP and Apple have to fix.  In the meantime, my only printer don't work.

[BryanCustomPure]

There is something bigger. If this doesn't work, create your own new post, and message me the link. I will help you there. I am no longer following this thread.

[wrenjim]

Hi --
We have two Mac computers. One is running the most recent version of Mojave, the other is running the most recent version of Catalina. We checked for printer updates using the printer's touch screen, but no updates were available.
So, we updated the firmware on our HP Color Laser Jet Pro MFP M281 fdw through the HP website. We were not able to perform the update to the printer directly through the HP website, so we downloaded the firmware update file to our computer running Mojave. We installed the new printer firmware successfully. The computer running Catalina was then able to print with no problems....the printer error messages stopped happening on this computer. But, the Mac running Mojave continued to get printing error messages after the printer firmware update and still could not open and print a document. We had been trying to print a PDF. 
So, we checked Apple's website for how to resolve printer issues. Based on Apple's list of suggestions, our next step was to look at the System Preferences on the computer running Mojave. We looked at the printers/scanners preferences. In the printers/scanners preferences pane, we found that somehow the default printer had been switched from the new color laser printer to an old HP printer that is offline! We changed the default printer back to the Color Laser printer. After restarting the computer (Mojave), we were able to print a document with no problems. 
I don't know what happened to cause the printing problem. Both computers had recent security updates from Apple, but the printing problems happened several days later. I have no idea how the default printer preference got switched.

[SammyH1]

Hey Bryan:  I followed your instructions and suggestions.  I reloaded the software as you suggested and it got the printer to stop giving an error message.  However, now it just says "waiting for printer to become available."  I checked the connectivity and the printer shows it is online, etc...   Suggestions?