Printing Problem Check List

If you are having trouble printing , you can try the following measures:

1. Be sure you are logged in as a user (just don't hit the cancel button on the log in screen). If you are logged in as anyone other than Guest (with the password guest) you may have to type in a password to access the printer. That password is guest. On the PC you can always go to the Start Menu and under shutdown choose the "close down and log in as another user" On the Mac exit to the At Ease log in screen and log in again.

2. If a printer has been on all night and this is the first time it is being used, you may power the printer down and start it up again.

3. You can also try restarting the computer that is not seeing the printer. This will sometimes fix the problem. On restart, you may get a message to ask you whether you want to print the jobs in the spool. It is usually better to cancel the existing print jobs and print afresh.

4. You can check jobs in the print spool as well as other important print job information. On a PC go to the Start menu...Settings...Printers.Double click on the local printer to see active jobs. You can go through the menu items to control various aspects of printing. If printing is set to "work offline" try and uncheck this. If that doesn't work you should restart the computer. You can also purge all job as well as pause jobs. See if the pause jobs is invoked. On a Mac the Print Monitor is available by clicking on the application icon which is in the extreme upper right hand corner of the screen.

5. (PC) Another way to try and get the printer working is to go to the Start...Settings...Printers. Select the printer and right click the icon. Choose the properties tab. The second tab will let you see the actual connection the computer is making to the printer. You want the printer to be connected via the ntserver 1 port - It will look like \\mvrhs_ntserver1\a102hplj or \\mvrhs_ntserver1\hp4000 . If it says \\HpNetwork Printers or something similar you want to change the port to be the mvrhs_ntserver1 port. If it is already set to the ntserver1 port, you can switch the port to LPT1, click on the apply key at the bottom of the screen, close and then reopen the dialogue box. Go back again, and change the port back to the mvrhs_ntserver1 port. This will sometimes fix the problem.

6. If, when you check the print queue, you see a file that is owned by "SYSTEM" then call a tech person. This is a printing problem that can only be rectified by a tech person.

7. If none of these solutions work, please don't take it out on the machine. Call us in Technology. Under certain circumstances, the NT server may be down and that is why you might not be able to print.


MVRHS 01/10/2000