Non-functioning Printer

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In an attempt to diagnose a friend’s HP Deskjet D1420, I’m running a CentOS 6.10 LiveDVD. The readily visible symptom is that it will accept a job and claim to be printing it, but nothing ever gets printed, not even a test page. The same happens on her Ubuntu system.

I recently learned that a blinking power light means that the printer is complaining about something. What?
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00905267#d0e5511enww
“If an error message appears Read the error message that explains the problem and its solution.”
Huh?
Where on a Deskjet D1420 could an error message possibly appear?
Does it mean this message in /var/cups/error_log?
E [13/May/2021:15:18:53 -0400] [CGI] Unable to create avahi client: Resource temporarily unavailable E [13/May/2021:15:18:53 -0400] [cups-deviced] PID 2094 (dnssd) stopped with status 1!

Would the presence or absence of whatever avahi is cause the printer to complain?

The printer used to print. The hardware connection has not changed in years.

Any ideas?

16 thoughts on - Non-functioning Printer

  • Printers usually have “print test page” soemewhere in their own menu. Before attempting to connect anything to printer I would test that first.

    Valeri

  • If this machine has a menu anywhere, I cannot find it. Print test page from localost:631 gives me the same unending print.

  • The first link should have got you page 34 of the user manual, which states that you need a program to access the print test page function. According to the manual, there is no button that you push to print the test page as there is on many other printers.

    The second link describes the hp-toolbox program, which runs on Linux and (apparently) will allow you to access the test page function.

  • With the Deskjet D1420 disconnected, hp-probe finds no USB printers (duh). With the Deskjet D1420 connected, hp-probe finds it. hp-testpage produces error: Unable to communicate with printer Deskjet-D1400-series. Please check the printer and try again.

    Note that hp-probe found it.

    hp-testpage also produces a popup saying … There is a problem with a print cartridge (1017)

    It does not say which one or why this would cause communication failure.

    How do I figure this out?

  • The exact test of the output from hp-probe -busb -g is….

    The output from hp-testpage printername -g is….

    The relevant parts of /var/log/messages, /var/log/cups/access_log and /var/log/cups/error-log and /var/log/cups/page_log are….

  • At Fri, 14 May 2021 22:22:24 -0500 (CDT) CentOS mailing list wrote:

    HP printers are bitchy about using non-HP branded ink carts (or tonor carts).
    HP is very interested in extracting their “pound of flesh” for all eternity.

    You will have to “easter egg” it. Swap the carts out one-by-one with new, HP
    carts until the error goes away.

  • Op Sat, 15 May 2021 05:22:24 +0200 schreef Michael Hennebry
    :

    Try hp-setup and hp-check and give me the results.

    Ger van Dijck.

  • Op Sat, 15 May 2021 05:22:24 +0200 schreef Michael Hennebry
    :

    Try hp-setup and hp-check

    Ger van Dijck.

  • They are not the worst I’ve seen. We have a bunch of HP laser printers, and though used HP supplies originally, do use “aftermarket” ones for multiple years.

    Who are really bad are Xerox. Even though I agree that they “taught the world how to copy”, at some point I dropped them, and wherever my word counts I recommend against Xerox. At some point they started making slight modifications to printer models thus making pretty much the same printers only with toners incompatible between models. Thus, each “model” was produced in smaller number, making aftermarket toner manufacturing unprofitable. That was only half of trouble, we were buying Xerox supplies anyway. But at some point they stopped making toners for printers as young as 6 years old if memory serves me. So, we had to throw away good working Xerox printers merely 6 years old, as you can not get toners for them. They, BTW, didn’t fix vulnerability in these older printers as well.

    Since that event my decision is: NO XEROX ANYTHING!

    For comparison: we had; still have HP 4050 that was getting a lot of use and beating it is 19 years old now, still works, you still can buy HP toner for that.

    So, I really would place HP (printers department) into really good guys. (Not HP / compaq laptop department, though I didn’t check their laptops recently)

    Just my $0.02.

    Valeri

  • I bought an HP multifunction machine (M281fdw) some years ago. At first it worked fine with aftermarket supplies, but following a firmware
    “upgrade”* it refused to work with the third party supplies. I have unusable, full, large black + 3 colour cartridges. To be fair, in other respects the mfp is fine and plays well with Linux, unlike some other manufacturers. Just budget for buying expensive HP supplies.

    Martin

    *Official description, not what I called it!

    —
    J Martin Rushton MBCS

  • I suspect that my friend does not want me working on her printer any more. If she asks, I will tell her that changing the cartidges might work, but that I am dubious.

  • It also might be time to just replace the printer. Inkjet printers are built to be thrown away after a *few* years (even HPs), and are rarely worth the time and effort to “repair”.

    At Tue, 18 May 2021 11:43:50 -0500 (CDT) CentOS mailing list wrote:

  • [liveuser@localhost ~]$ hp-probe -busb -g

    HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.15.9)
    Printer Discovery Utility ver. 4.1

    Copyright (c) 2001-15 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
    This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

    ——————

  • [liveuser@localhost ~]$ hp-setup -i

    HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.15.9)
    Printer/Fax Setup Utility ver. 9.0

    Copyright (c) 2001-15 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
    This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

    (Note: Defaults for each question are maked with a ‘*’. Press to accept the default.)

    ——————————