Question

HP Laserjet 4050N prints black pages or jibberish from from all but one of the machines on our network

Asked by: webfxonline

I've installed the HP 4050N driver from the HP support site and all but one of our networked machines prints either an all black page (or variation thereof) when I try to print to it.  However, the front desk (receptionist's) machine can print Word Documents just fine.  When I (or anyone else) tries to print anything to it (e-mails, printer test pages) I get what looks like a printer test page but all of the text is replaced with black lines.  When I try to print any e-mails I get an entire blacked out page.  Any ideas?

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Asked On
2006-12-14 at 14:17:50ID22094001
Tags

hp

Topic

Printers

Participating Experts
3
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0
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: printerguyPosted on 2006-12-15 at 17:31:32ID: 18150194

Interesting..  Sounds like the drum ground on the toner cartridge. This can be an intermittant problem. Try swapping toners first. If this does not  help, it could be the laser. Check your error log in the 'information' menu. If you have errors 51.x or 52.x, it's the laser. Are you positive about the windows version 'driver' that you down loaded? It could also be a dirty high voltage power supple 'contact', engine control boad or the formatter.  fax me a copy of one of these pages along with the 'error log' page and the 'configuration' page.  303 337-2002

 

by: joedPosted on 2006-12-15 at 18:03:34ID: 18150255

If the printer can print self test pages and one PC can print pages then the problem is not the printer. It is a problem on the PCs.

 

by: printerguyPosted on 2006-12-15 at 18:19:24ID: 18150356

joed.. guess I didn't understand their question. It was a little confusing. When they said "machines", I couldn't tell if they were talking about the printer's' or computers. "printer test pages" means printer configuration page or computer test pages?? It's sometimes difficult to understand the problem when they use non specific words. 'machines' is a COMPUTER or PRINTER, that is the question..

 

by: webfxonlinePosted on 2006-12-17 at 14:52:47ID: 18155807

The term 'machines' was referring to other PC's on our network.

 

by: webfxonlinePosted on 2006-12-19 at 07:51:31ID: 18166458

I solved the problem.  It was a driver issue.  The only driver on the HP support site for this printer was an HP Universal Printer Driver (not a specific driver for this model).  After installing this driver you have to click on the "advanced tab" and in the driver listing drop-down change it from HP Universal Printing PCL5 to HP LaserJet 4050 Series PCL 5e and it cures all of the above mentioned conditions.  FYI: Laser Logic (our local printer vendor/service shop) also thought it sounded like a defective cartdridge issue by it printing an entire black page.  Luckily it was all driver-related.

 

by: DarthModPosted on 2007-01-20 at 09:33:05ID: 18357042

PAQed with points refunded (500)

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