HP LJ P2015 ERROR: limitcheck OC: image

Question

We have an HP LaserJet network printer which is accessed by several devices, principally a MacBook running OSX 10.7 and a MacPro running 10.6. Both computers have problems but they are different. It may be confusing but I will try to address them all in this one question, if you will forgive me.
MacPro 10.6.8 has no problem printing except from Mail. If I select a Mail message and ask for it to print, the printer's green light flashes briefly and then nothing happens. Not only does it not print but it stops anything else printing until I reboot everything. Just Mail, nothing else.
MacBook 10.7 manages to print fine except, occasionally, when we want to print some screen shot PNG files, we get a PostScript error: ERROR: limitcheck (and) OFFENDING COMMAND: image. This can be overcome by turning off Auto rotate and printing a landscape image across the width of a portrait page but this makes the images too small.
Is this just a memory problem? There is no information available from HP on the detailed setting up of the printer in the printer's web page (they refer you to a wizard which I do not have) and I wonder if I am not doing something I should in the setup. It would seem odd that it should be a memory issue as I print far larger images from the MacPro and it seems to me that the problem is peculiar to Lion and not a problem with Snow Leopard. The on board memory is 32MB and it says only 17.61MB is available.
The printer is connected directly to a Time Capsule by RJ45. The MacPro is wired to the Time Capsule but the MacBook speaks to it wirelessly. Am a bit stuck and any advice would be welcome.

Answer 1

Hi LilyLC (HTH),
Thanks for taking the trouble to provide such a well crafted answer. Sadly, I have done all the usual routine checks; the software and both Mail and HP drivers are all the latest versions. There is something very odd going on and I will try to flesh out the question, hopefully, without adding confusion!
MacPro with 10.6.8: Prints to the HP P2015N without any problems... except... solely this Mail problem which is more than simply not wanting to print anything directly from Mail. I have found that if I print a Mail message to PDF before trying to print to paper on the HP it still will not print it; it stops dead and the queue becomes blocked and nothing else will print until I have flushed the blockage. Re making the "printer" in prefs does not change this. The printer happily prints anything which does not originate in Mail, directly or indirectly.
MacBook with 10.7.5: Prints to the HP P2015N without any problems.... except... when printing screenshots which are not very large PNGs, opened in Preview. We quite like having PNGs and I have no problem printing PNGs from the MacPro. The way we can print screenshots from the MacBook is to print a landscape image to a portrait layout. If we print a landscape image to landscape paper it fails. Which is odd because I do not see that this changes the demand for memory, only toner... The paper size is A4 at all points, insofar as that is what the MacBook is sending and what the printer is expecting.
It is a strange conundrum in both cases and I am not yet sure which is the more irritating. I am going to update the OS on MacBook this weekend to 10.8, to see if that kicks some sense into it but the MacPro seems likely to stay on 10.6 indefinitely, being the last version to work properly without breaking stuff (Mail printing aside which I think arrived with the update from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 though I could be imagining that).
If anyone else has an HP Laser printer exhibiting similar oddness I would welcome news that I am not on my own at least. Nothing HP does surprises, rarely is it good and I rejoice that my computer is not made by them.
Drew