Printer problem (HP LaserJet 5L (!))

[jefnl]

My printer is acting up...often stops printing in mid-page, then prints the rest of the page on the following piece of paper, then gives an "out-of-paper" yellow light. Irritating when one is trying to print out long documents. The problem occurs in Word (2003) , in Adobe Acrobat Reader, and in printing from the Internet (IE 6.0). I am running Windows XP and did download SP2.

Any suggestions?

[JohnGray]

Old age perhaps?

The printing of part of the data on one page then the rest on another used to be symptomatic of insufficient printer memory to print what is now largely generated as "graphics".

What printer driver level are you using? PCL 5? 5e? You might like to try swapping to a different one, if one is still available on the HP website...

John

[jefnl]

Thanks for the reply.

How do I determine what printer driver level I'm using? (Can't find it in "properties" of the printer in Word, even under the "Advanced" button.)

Joel

[HansV]

Open the Printers and Faxes control panel (in the Printers and Other Hardware category).
Right-click the HP LaserJet and select Properties.
Activate the Advanced tab.
You should be able to see the driver here.

[jefnl]

Thanks for the tips, but I've not yet been able to solve the problem.

The "Properties" info isn't specific about the version of PCL used.

I (re-?) installed the driver (presumably from the image of XP on my hard drive)...didn't solve the problem.

I visited the HP site...links for FAQ's and automatic driver tests didn't work, even though I enabled cookies for the site. I downloaded the available driver (PCL 5e, rev 2 12 02), but was unable to do anything with it. I tried extracting the files...it claimed that it was extracting 41 files...but, in the folder specified, there were no files to run.

Any suggestions?

[HansV]

I'm sorry, I'm out of my depth here. I hope that someone else will pick this up.

[bigaldoc]

I too may be out of my league here since I no longer have a laser printer and, as John said, I haven't seen this problem for a long time. When I work my way through the HP maze, I end up here: HP LaserJet 4, 5, 6 PCL5e Driver - HP Business Support Center by using only Laserjet 5L as my criteria. So, I downloaded a file called <big>lj631en.exe</big>. Is that the same file you downloaded? If so, try manually extracting the files using Winzip to a folder of YOUR choice. If you right-click the file as I did, you should be able to extract the files yourself.

In there you should find a file called <big> lj456p5.inf </big> which should be the file you right-click and select the INSTALL option.

Just for the heck of it, at the HP link above, they have some instructions for what to do. If you use my "trick" for the extraction, try starting at their instruction paragraph that reads: "Update the printer if it was previously installed." If all of this doesn't work, I too will be out of ideas. Good luck!

[jefnl]

In case anyone else has a similar problem...I solved mine by ordering an 8 MB memory card from Memory4Less.

Joel

[JohnGray]

So I was right, then!

John