Windows 7 - HP LaserJet 4050 Series PCL5 Printing problems.

Hello Sevenforums,

I have my HP 4050 Laser printer hooked up through a usb to parallel port cable and windows recognizes the printer but that is all it does. In the devices and printers list of all my related devices there lists two "shadow" 4050's that were created as windows discovered the new hardware that do not seem to do anything at all as they are set to be offline and a third "online" printer that will not print any job in the queue. I am sure there is a logical explination for this but i just do not know what it is. If anyone has delt with this before please help

Alpha90, Something tells me that your parallel<>USB device is not passing all the signals that the computer or printer need.
I recommend getting a small parallel network device that you can plug in and connect to your network. They work great and at a non-profit that I volunteer at we have used them lots of times do to funding constraints.

They are pretty cheap and anyone on your network can install the driver for the device and printing works.
D-Link is one that comes to mind.

Rich

Richnrockville,

I plan to convert my printer to a network device when I have the available funds but for now I must settle for Centronics to USB Cable. The frustrating thing to me is my printer was working until recently and when I send something to print it sticks in the printer queue as an error until I restart which it then prints out everything in the queue as windows loads its startup drivers and files. Therefore, that makes me think it is something in the software environment. What do you think?

Well my thumb drive was some how interfereing with my printer but my printer seems to time out after awhile it stops printing