PDF not printing on certain printer and certain user

[Hans Manhave]

All of a sudden a single workstation won't print PDFs on a specific printer.  Printer and workstation have been power cycled several times.  Acrobat Reader has been uninstalled and a newer version installed.  The station prints fine from TAM, from Outlook 2007 etc.  Just when one opens a PDF and sends it to the printer, it does as if it prints (printer icon lower right) but nothing comes out of the printer.  If another printer is selected, it works fine.

Thoughts and suggestions, please.

[Bob]

Was there some sort of automatic update done that brought this on.

If unsure, view your system restore points.   See if have date saved from update about the time the problem started.   I find updates can be maddening with some of there side affects.

[Mark]

Also, try to set "print as image" in the advanced setting when printing the PDF.

[Jim Jensen]

Print drivers can be flaky too - I have usually found PCL5 to most reliable with PDF, but PCL6 is usually reliable too. PCS seems finicky. You might try one of the other driver options if you have choice. HPs often have at least 2 or 3 driver options.

[Jeff Zylstra]

I've had some issues lately with PDFs and Adobe Reader lately.  Things like it not printing a PDF.  That turned out to be a damaged user profile.  Reinstalling Reader did nothing. Recreating the user profile fixed it. 

And I've had it where all it would print was a blank page when trying to print a PDF from a webpage.  That turned out to be an %appdata%\temp\low folder that was non-existent or didn't have the correct permissions.  That may or may not have been an IE problem, and not a Reader problem.

I've also had long file names for PDFs generated by websites cause the print spooler to lockup or behave erratically.  Clearing out the print spooler took care of that temporarilly, and saving the PDF with a shorter file name and then printing it was the workaround.

I also have a printer where if the "collate" pages is turned on, it won't print.  It looks like it is printing and there's no errors, but nothing ever comes out.  HTH.

[Hans Manhave]

A bunch of stuff to check into.   As far as I can tell the spool folder is clear.

I installed a PS driver for the printer, but no relieve.

I check the events and found event #6161 for this, MS had no help on it.  Googling that confused me more than helped.

[Jeff Zylstra]

A bunch of stuff to check into.   As far as I can tell the spool folder is clear.

I installed a PS driver for the printer, but no relieve.

I check the events and found event #6161 for this, MS had no help on it.  Googling that confused me more than helped.

If you log in as an Administrator on that machine, can you print then? 

[Hans Manhave]

I did not experience a difference between 'user' and 'administrator'.  Both, Win7 and WinXP experienced the same problems.  Win7 having a different event id, but MS not having a solution.  So, I looked for a port issue.  A bit strange, maybe, because a 'rights' issue would seem reasonable.  I noticed that the printer(s) that did work had a port assigned as 'standard tcp/ip port'.  The problem port was deployed as 'local port'.  Creating a new port, same IP of course, does let the printer operate.  Hopefully it lasts as there was no trouble before.  Could very well have been a windows update, but XP doesn't update anymore, right? and windows 7 worked before too.

UPDATE: This worked on Win7, not having a positive result on a WinXP.  There must be more to it.

[Hans Manhave]

On WinXP I reverted back to some time in history.  It was late at the office, I picked an unknown restore date which caused a bunch of updates to have to be reinstalled, but.... it was worth it.  It works fine now.  It is possible that other factors also affected it.  Such as doing all this as administrator.  I'll never know.

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!