I had this odd issue from a client who has an office with 3 or 4 HP Inkjets all the same model. She started having an issue where one printer will intermittently print pages completely blurred.
The client did the following to try and resolve the issue.
- Tried a known good printer on the PC with the dodgy printouts. The new printer now suffered from intermittently blurred printing.
- The suspect printer was tried on another computer and there waws no issue.
My Contribution
This completely points to the driver, however her IT Technician refutes this and said she should buy another printer. The points below are my argument that it is not the printer and give possible solutions.
As discussed I believe it to be the PC at fault and not the printer because:
- The issue only ever occurs on the one PC and this happens with different printers on that same PC
- The faulty printing does not happen all the time but randomly meaning it cannot be the printer as a printer with such a fault will do it all the time
- The “dodgy printer” works fine on other members of staff PC with no issue.
Also It is not compatible cartridges that is causing the issue because:
- Josie does not use them
- The fault, if caused by a dodgy cartridge would happen all the time
What is like causing the fault is the driver because:
- Without seeing the printing error it sounds like the print image is not being correctly converted into a bitmap or not being uncompressed at the printer if using a proprietary format. The settings in the printer driver are irrelevant because it works sometimes and then not others and there is not a setting for blurred image printing
- Stretching it here, that it could be the USB cable not properly handling a USB 2.0 signal and as such the images is not uncompressed at the printer properly because of bandwidth (longshot)
- Sometimes AV can interfere but with only one PC having the issue I am not convinced about it being the cause here..
How to fix this
- Uninstall the printer drivers and re-install the printer (with a reboot in between)
- Uninstall all of the HP printer driver files using the HP printer removal tool (with a reboot in between)
- Try a new USB cable
- Also make sure all windows updates are applied.
Solution
I am not sure what the exact fix was because I did not perform it. However the client said he swapped the USB cable and this fixed it. I suspect there was more to this fix or it was the fact that the printer was re-installed