Hp 6968 won't print yet print queue shows empty

I ran into a very odd issue today that as-is I only have working using a workaround. I have a 32-bit windows 7 machine. The HP 6968 printer is hooked into my wireless router via ethernet cable. I downloaded the drivers and ran the setup on another ethernet connected Vista 32-bit machine and a wireless Win7 64-bit machine. Both print just fine.

On the Windows 7 32-bit machine though, nothing will print. I can successfully SCAN using the printer listed under Devices & Printers so I know the computer is talking to the 6968.

When I do try to print I get a message saying that the job has been sent to the printer. The printer never starts and when I view the print queue nothing shows up. I have tried restarting the spooler service and that does not work either. I also made sure there was nothing listed in the "C:\Windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS" directory which there was not. One odd thing I did notice, is that when I print a file will show in this directory for a second and then disappear.

As a work-around, I set up the 6968 on the Vista machine (which is always on) as a shared printer. I then added this shared network printer from the 32-bit Windows 7 machine that I am having the issue with. On the Vista machine there is the option to "render print jobs on client machine" for the shared printer. When enabled, the Windows 7 machine will still NOT print. It's only after I UN-check this box so that the print jobs from the 32Win7 machine are processed on the Vista machine can I actually print.

With this it seems my issue is around print jobs not properly being processed on the Windows 7 machine. Any ideas? Connecting directly over USB did not work either. I also updated the printer's firmware but that didn't help. I am lost as what to try next.

MoxieMomma said:

Hi:

protivakid said:

I ran into a very odd issue today that as-is I only have working using a workaround. I have a 32-bit windows 7 machine. The HP 6968 printer is hooked into my wireless router via ethernet cable. I downloaded the drivers and ran the setup on another ethernet connected Vista 32-bit machine and a wireless Win7 64-bit machine. Both print just fine.

That's odd. AFAIK, for HP AIOs, one cannot simultaneously use both ethernet and wireless networking.
I think it's "either-or".
I am surprised that you can have both ethernet and wifi enabled on the HP at the same time.
Normally, one would need to disconnect the ethernet to use the wifi, or vice versa.

One *can* use a local (USB) connection + either ethernet or wifi at the same time, though.

I suggest the following for starters:

• Disconnect the 32-bit Win7 machine from the HP
• Fully uninstall all traces of the HP drivers/software and reboot
• Download a fresh copy of the HP drivers/software from the HP drivers/downloads site HERE
  
  • Be sure to grab the correct drivers/software package for 32-bit Windows 7
  • There are 2 choices -- the full bloatware package and the "basic drivers"
• Reinstall the HP drivers -- make sure you are in a Windows account with Admin privileges when you do; do not connect the computer to the HP until the HP setup wizard prompts you to do so
• Perhaps try a USB connection from the computer to the HP?

One other thought: if the HP is still under warranty, HP phone support can probably walk you through proper setup and configuration. Over the years, I have found them to be quite helpful for these sorts of things.


Hope this helps a wee bit,


MM

I have the printer connected via internet to a wireless router. The wireless router is what allow's the printer to be wireless in this case, not the actual printer itself.

I have actually tried all of the steps you suggested other than calling HP. This seems to be an issue with Windows print spooler services so I figured their support would be less helpful then I'd like. I would probably get stuck spending 2 hours going over all of the steps I already completed just for them to tell me to return the printer as it's "defective". It prints from the other two machines fine so I don't think the printer itself is the issue.

hi Proti,
can you go
Control Panel >> admin Tools >> services >> scroll to Computer Browser (right click)
in your case it should be set to Automatic, then check dependency should be as in screenshot.

Roy

torchwood said:

hi Proti,
can you go
Control Panel >> admin Tools >> services >> scroll to Computer Browser (right click)
in your case it should be set to Automatic, then check dependency should be as in screenshot.

Roy

I saw the person I was trying to fix this for today and gave this a go. Computer Browser was set to manual so I set it to auto. Still though after a reboot no difference. I had to resort back to using the printer through his desktop like my previous workaround. I even tried un-installing all drivers, adding a printer manually over TCP, and using the driver that was installed from the desktop with the work around NOT the driver package from HP. The logo of the printer remained standard under Devices & Printers instead of changing to a fancy logo that resembles the machine like the official driver package, but still it made no difference, it would not print. Any other ideas?

Wanted to give a final update. I found some other suggestions and was finally able to solve this today. I first tried the "HP Print & Scan Doctor" which identified there was a problem but said that the tool was unable to resolve it. I then decided to try a different driver. I uninstalled the 6968 Drivers and rebooted. I then selected to Add a new Printer in Control Panel. I picked My device is not listed, even though it was, and went through the manual process. I put in the IP of the printer (which is set as static) and chose to manually select a driver. I filtered to "HP" and selected the "Officejet Pro 8000 A809 Series" driver. I did a test print and immediately everything worked despite the printer model numbers not matching up. I read online that others have had to do similar work-arounds and this finally resolved my issue. Seems the 6968 Driver from HP had some issues with my system. Hope this helps someone else down the road.

I have often used a static IP address for setting up HP and other network printers over the years. It guarantees that your computers can always find that printer.

One thing you might want to do, in order to ensure that that IP address is always reserved for that printer: go into your router's setup and exclude that IP address from the range of available IP addresses, so the router doesn't try to assign it to any other device.

mrjimphelps said:

I have often used a static IP address for setting up HP and other network printers over the years. It guarantees that your computers can always find that printer.

One thing you might want to do, in order to ensure that that IP address is always reserved for that printer: go into your router's setup and exclude that IP address from the range of available IP addresses, so the router doesn't try to assign it to any other device.

I too have been assigning static addresses to HP printers for probably a decade now, it seems to help fix printer offline issues. I went into their router as well and excluded the address I assigned to the printer. The issue I had seemed to be driver related but this is still a good tip for future readers.