Most bizarre printer issue in 25yrs of computing

[ThomasW]

The girl friend was complaining that using her desktop PC she could not print any of her documents, but she could print emails and printer test pages from the contol panel....

So went over to her place and sure enough, her little HP Deskjet will print emails, webpages or whatever, but not Word docs, NotePad/WordPad files. When ask to print those files the print head moves around and makes noises like it's printing but pages come out blank.

Did the uninstall, reinstall printers, changed and tried different software drivers same thing...

So grabbed her laptop and tried it. Same thing, it will print anything except Window/Microsoft word processing programs....

Anyone have a clue? She's little freaked out since she needs to print some stuff.

[dyazdani]

Thomas, close Word and do a search for all files titled "Normal" really "Normal.dot" (depending on if you view extensions). Delete them and restart Word, see what happens.

[ThomasW]

Hi Danish,

I'm no longer at her place.

What am I looking for?

Remember this occurs on 2 totally different computers. We tried cutting and pasting a section from a word doc into Notepad same thing occurs.

I should add this is a new problem, previously everything printed fine.

[dyazdani]

I've seen other examples of the issue where the Word settings get corrupted. Deleting the "normal.dot" files causes Word to reset the profiles and printing starts working again.

You're right though, I didn't factor in the same thing happening on two PCs...did you try a hammer?

Try printing from Word, but make all the text red or blue. This might rule out some issue with the color settings (e.g. print set to white for some reason or a messed up black cartridge)

[ThomasW]

A hammer to the printer is a definite possibility...

I'll probably go to Costco tomorrow and get a new printer....

The truly weird thing is it prints an XP test page correctly, and it prints webpages and emails correctly...

So color me confused..... 8O :roll:

[dyazdani]

Yeah, I did a Google search and found several people with the same issue, but no resolution...

[Hdale85]

Almost as if the printer is processing a certain file type incorrectly. Very strange?

[Kevin P]

Maybe the Word docs are printing in color while emails print in full black, or vice versa, and one of the cartridges is dead? Try going into File->Print, then click Properties from within Word and see what the settings are at. Check settings for color etc.

When you print an XP test page, do you get the correct colors in the Windows logo?

You could try uninstalling and reinstalling the printer drivers too and see if that helps.

[ThomasW]

Maybe the Word docs are printing in color while emails print in full black, or vice versa, and one of the cartridges is dead? Try going into File->Print, then click Properties from within Word and see what the settings are at. Check settings for color etc.

I checked all the settings in the Properities section, they're the same for anything the printer prints (docs, email, whatever), but Word/NotePad/WordPad files don't print even though the printer goes through all the motions of printing them

When you print an XP test page, do you get the correct colors in the Windows logo?

Yep everything is printed correctly on the XP test page

You could try uninstalling and reinstalling the printer drivers too and see if that helps.

Did that, I even tried drivers for a different but similar printer.....with the same results.

The strange thing is this printer is several years old and has worked just fine until a week ago when this problem started.

[Hdale85]

Hmm...oh well printers are pretty cheap at least.