HP LaserColor 3550 : printing jobs just hang for no apparent reason

On an iMac G5 I administer at work an HP Laser Color 3550 was recently installed by a professional from the store. It did one printing job just to please the technician and then, later, when someone else tried to print, the job just hung! I should perhaps add that it's a multi-account machine which I administer but personally don't use, apart from checking it out.
I spent a long time deleting and re-adding the printer in Printer Setup and repairing permissions.
I installed and reinstalled the driver and HP toolbox from the HP site and, when I realised that no extra installation was in fact required in Tiger, became worried that my having done this installation was what was causing the problem.
I also used Printer Setup Repair to repair specific permissions. This came up with a message saying a CUPS file was missing which it couldn't repair (sorry, I didn't note the detail and I'm not on the same machine at the moment).
I've read some of the posts here with look-alike problems and noted down the steps that Greg Sahli has recommended. But I'm wondering whether I shouldn't go directly to a Combi re-update?
I'd be very grateful for any help!
Mike
imac G5 2mgz Mac OS X (10.4.3)
imac G3 600

Mr or Ms Light,
No, I don't think it's an OS problem. Printing on the Mac is nightmarishly complicated (under the hood), and HP installs its own system that bypasses the default FreeBSD system. This is an occasional problem with my HP 5550. HP claims to have good user support.
I've had, regularly, the exact symptoms. I've a migraine now, so I can't remember what I do about it. But it would be typical of me to press the printer button off, then clear the queue, then turn on the printer and have it remove the paper still in it. If needed, I might restart the computer.
As for the cause, for the last 10 minutes I've been asking my 4-year old granddaughter, but she's not in the mood to tell me. However, she often prints pictures of Elmo off the internet to color, and she captures parts of screens and prints them. This is with the USB cable disconnected; and its when I reconnect it, the exact symptoms you describe occur.
Try the above, and I may be able to give you a definitive answer later, after my granddaughter's nap.
Bruce

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Printer goes off-line for no apparent reason

<Repeat posting - I couldn't find "post new topic" links when I first put it up over the weekend - administrators please remove my post at message ID=8913195>
For about five days I have not been able to print over a home network from either an iMac (PowerMac G5, or an Intel-based MacBook Pro. My wife's WinXP PC prints no problem.
The first few times I tried, the printer progress bar would just hang at 98% complete, but now when I clear stalled jobs and try to print a new one, the printer goes offline within a couple of seconds. Clicking on "Start jobs" does no good, it just shuts off again.
I have installed security updates recently, but don't remember exactly if this was done since I last printed successfully. Can anyone tell me if the updates could be screwing with my printer connection and/or is there another explanation?
Hardware and system information:
1) Both Macs are running OS10.4.11 and both the PPC and the Intel machine behave the same.
2) Both Macs are using their AirPorts to connect to the router, but when I rebooted I shut off AirPort and use ethernet for the iMac, it still goes offline as soon as I try to print.
3) The router is an Actiontec MI424WR (from Verizon). I read some complaints about this before getting it in March, but haven't had any connection problems which I can attribute to the router.
4) Both Macs ping the printer no problem. (Printer is configured with a static IP, and Boot IP and DHCP are turned off to keep from confusing the slow-witted Windows cousin.) System Profiler knows the printer is there (information displayed in System Profiler):
Magicolor DL2430:
Status: Idle
Print Server: Local
Driver Version: 1.3.0
Default: Yes
URI: lpd:///
PPD: KONICA MINOLTA magicolor 2430 DL
PPD File Version: 1.3.0
PostScript Version:
5) I don't regularly share files between PowerBook and iMac, so I doubt this is due to a real security issue.

FYI - If you read through the details about troubleshooting the network, you will realize that this is not the "exact same problem" since your printer isn't recognized. Since you can print a couple of pages, I doubt it's a driver or the network, but in getting ready to call customer service at Canon, you might want to try a few of these tests:
1) Launch System Profiler: click on the blue Apple icon in the top left corner and select "About this Mac" and then click on "More Info..." (lower button).
In the left-hand column of the System Profiler, toward the end of the Hardware list, select Printers. This should give you details of any recognized printer hardware. If it's there, the problem isn't a connection, so it ought to be due to printer setup or configuration.
(You can highlight and copy the information displayed, so you might want to save this in a text file and/or print it out. Tech support people can be remarkably resistant to recognizing information which tells them that you don't need to waste time making sure it's plugged in, checking your cables, etc.)
2) Get your printer user manual and see how to set the network settings. Try what I did - set the IP address to a fixed number (e.g. 192.168.1.199) instead of using DHCP to dynamically reassign an IP # after reboot. Write this number down and remember it.
3) Reboot your computer and router (some of this may be unnecessary, but we mere mortals never know which are required to get network recognition and which aren't) Now check your printing with a document with little content but which runs over 3-4 pages.
4) Go to your Applications directory in a Finder panel and open the Utilities folder, then launch Terminal. At the prompt type:
ping <IP number, i.e. 192.168.1.199 if that's what you set it at>
If you get a series of responses at ~ 1 sec intervals ("64 bytes from IP address..."), this confirms hardware and network connections are OK, and you should be looking at configuaration problems.
5) Even though it's getting to seem like the sound of one hand clapping, keep checking back here. Also, try Canon if they don't want $70 an hour to tell you "Oh, we don't know much about Macs!) There may be one or two non Mac-allergic folks on their staff.
Good luck!

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auditor@mymachine:~/workspace/hello/src$ java -version
java version "1.5.0"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.2.1 (Ubuntu 4.2.1-5ubuntu5)
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Eclipse Java Compiler v_774_R33x, 3.3.1, Copyright IBM Corp 2000, 2007. All rights reserved.
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When I run it from Eclipse, though, the program doesn't seem to hang as badly as first suspected. It behaves as if I ran it from a terminal, but I can terminate the execution without error from Eclipse. So there's still some connection with the program, it seems.
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Thanks!

Thanks for your reply, sabre150.
Following
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=201378
resolves the problem (in terminal), though I still can't force Eclipse to use this environment.

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W500 broke down for no apparent reason

Dear all,
I have a W500 that worked fine for 4 years and suddenly started being faulty for no apparent reason.
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Additional details
As I mentioned above I've had this laptop for 4-5 years and it always worked properly without major glitches. Then one day windows suddenly failed to start without reason, although on rare occasions I was able to log in after a very long boot (which suggests to me that it might not be completely broken but just took forever to start up windows), but then it would also fail to shut down (hanged forever at the "windows is shutting down" screen.
Thinking back, the laptop did on rare occasions fail to start windows, but would always start the next time and never failed to shut down as far as I remember. Lately I also noticed freezing on some occasions, which at that time I thought might be related to the DVD because they seemed to happened only when the DVD was in use.
After many unsucessful attempts to recover the current system I reinstalled windows 7, and now windows is more or less running, but with the symptoms described above.
I've run chkdsk /F /R /B, sfc /scannow, and windows memory diagnostic multiple times, as well as several lenovo diagnostic tools (CPU, memory, optical, graphics and perhaps a couple of others); none of them returned any error (1 bad sector added to list by chkdsk last time it ran).
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I will update if I remember anything important or if there is any major new development.
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137 attempted reallocations with 6 currently pending. Your drive is probably on its way out.
Back-up your data immediately. You could try running SpinRite or HDD Regenerator on the drive to try and fix it, but chances are you should just replace it.
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HP LaserColor 3550 : printing jobs just hang for no apparent reason

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