mbell3752
asked on
Microsoft NT4.0 and XP Professional workstations losing print lines with HP4000 and HP8000 printers
Our servers are all 2000 boxes. All of our printers are HP4000 (network version I can't remember if it N, TN or what, they are networked with jet direct cards) except for 3 which are HP8000 printers. All of our users run Office XP Professional Suite. The majority of my users are on NT4.0 platforms, however I have 15 users who are on XP Professional operating system (no SP2 applied yet, but all other patches are up to date).
Here is the problem: for some reason the printers (both 4000 and 8000 models) just suddenly crop off the bottom third of the page of text. Usually if you print preview the document you can see that it is cutting off the bottom of the pages, however it has started cutting off the bottom of pages in the middle of a print job (for example, a 26 page document will print fine for the first 6 or 8 pages then cut off stuff for the remainder of the pages).
We have (1) downloaded the latest HP drivers for all the printers (both in the NT environment and the XP environment); (2) complete scrubbed the registry of all references to any printers and reinstalled the new drivers; (3) discovered "duplicate" vbs files on some workstations and deleted them but the problem comes back; (4) removed all references to printers in the registry and gone back to the original drivers from the original installation discs for the printers; and finally most drastic of all (4) completely reformatted workstations so we "start from scratch". None of the above actions solves our problem -- it only a temporary fix. The fact that this has started occurring in the middle of print jobs makes this way more than annoying. We have been battling this problem for 3 years. We even contacted Microsoft directly, just to be told that they had never seen this problem before. Nothing solves the problem permanently. The best fix is to simply close Word once this happens and then reopen the application -- that is also a temporary fix because the problem always comes back. (Each user has their own "normal.dot" on their individual hard drives so if this is a "corrupted normal" I don't know how it could corrupt all the normals.)
Here is the problem: for some reason the printers (both 4000 and 8000 models) just suddenly crop off the bottom third of the page of text. Usually if you print preview the document you can see that it is cutting off the bottom of the pages, however it has started cutting off the bottom of pages in the middle of a print job (for example, a 26 page document will print fine for the first 6 or 8 pages then cut off stuff for the remainder of the pages).
We have (1) downloaded the latest HP drivers for all the printers (both in the NT environment and the XP environment); (2) complete scrubbed the registry of all references to any printers and reinstalled the new drivers; (3) discovered "duplicate" vbs files on some workstations and deleted them but the problem comes back; (4) removed all references to printers in the registry and gone back to the original drivers from the original installation discs for the printers; and finally most drastic of all (4) completely reformatted workstations so we "start from scratch". None of the above actions solves our problem -- it only a temporary fix. The fact that this has started occurring in the middle of print jobs makes this way more than annoying. We have been battling this problem for 3 years. We even contacted Microsoft directly, just to be told that they had never seen this problem before. Nothing solves the problem permanently. The best fix is to simply close Word once this happens and then reopen the application -- that is also a temporary fix because the problem always comes back. (Each user has their own "normal.dot" on their individual hard drives so if this is a "corrupted normal" I don't know how it could corrupt all the normals.)
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You give me the points, so I must understand the problem was solved?
I wanted to ask "You gave me the points".
ASKER
No, the problem is not solved. I'm afraid I am too new to this process. I didn't know how to give comments without accepting the answer and giving points. Your suggestion about reconfiguring Word was one I had not tried until I got your suggestion and so far I am not seeing anything that will help me. All I see when I send documents to print is a box that comes up and tells me each page is printing -- it does not indicate any problems and yet I occasionally get cropped pages.
ASKER