wierd printer problem

A friend of mine is having a wierd printing problem. His printer stopped printer a month or two ago. It would go through all the actions, paper would feed print heads would move back and forth over the page and everything, just like it was printing, but nothing would be printed on the page. (Yes the tape was removed from the cartridges) We tried new cartridges, new printhead, new drivers and nothing. Today he went and bought a brand new printer and set it up. He called not too long ago saying that it is doing the same thing.
Has anyone seen this before or know what might be causing this?

Bad 25 pin connector on the mobo? (assuming it's not usb...) Almost sounds like a bad parallel cable, but if it's brand new I'd have to look at where it connects. Just a thought...your right...that is wierd!

New Printer, New parallel cabel. I never realy thaught of a bad port on the motherboard. That is something to check out. I will let you know what I find.

What make and Model are both printers...

If it is an HP (ink) try Using HP 500 or 550c Driver on it.
it is a system drives that works for almost all HP Models.
In oreder to check if it is a bad Parallel port on your PC - try connecting the printer to another system. To check the parralel port i believe you will need a loopback and a proggy.

Good Luck
Gabriel

The old printer was a Canon BJ2110 and the new one is also a cannon but a different model.(not sure which one)
I do have some hardware diagnostic tools at wook that I can try to use. It is called post probe, its a pci card that you plug into a slot and turn your computer on, it then tells you through 2 digit codes if you have any hardware failures.

Can you print a SelfTest from the PC?

Go to Control Panel/Printers...select the printer that you're concerned with...right click on it...select Properties...select Print SelfTest. This should tell you a lot.

How about printing a SelfTest from the Front Panel?
Follow these steps to perform a self-test from the printer (for BJC-2110):
With the printer's power plugged in, load sheets of paper into the sheet feeder.
Press and the RESUME button on the top of the printer twice quickly.
The printer will print a small grid (narrow horizontal and vertical lines) on the top corner of the page. You should see magenta (pink), yellow, cyan (blue) and black lines.

This should give you confidence that the printer itself is working fine.

Quote:

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Originally posted by gpint
The old printer was a Canon BJ2110 and the new one is also a cannon but a different model.(not sure which one)
I do have some hardware diagnostic tools at wook that I can try to use. It is called post probe, its a pci card that you plug into a slot and turn your computer on, it then tells you through 2 digit codes if you have any hardware failures.

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One thing that you should note is that Canon uses some sort of BS driver for the parallell port that would cause issues all the damn time. Look at the printer port (lpt1) and you will see it shows as a Canon printer port or something similar. Remove the paralell port, reinstall it and see if it works. If you bought a new Canon you will need to intall the Canon drivers again.

Also check the BOIS and see if the parallell port is turned on and set to use the proper protocol (ECP I think).

Sorry I didnt get back earlier. I went over to his house last night and had a look at it. He hooked up the new printer correctly and it was doing the exact same thing. I messed around with a few differnt things and found nothing. Finally I cleaned the print heads using the software maintnence tools about five times in a row. I figured that the ink just wanst flowing and the cleaning might help prime the cartridges. I then tried to print a test page and it worked.

We tried the cleaning process before, but I guess it wasnt enough to get the ink flowing.

Thanks for everyones suggestions!