Problems printing wirelessly with Canon PIXMA iP4500

Question

I have a MacBook Pro 15 in 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 Gb RAM and I’m running Mac OSX 10.5.7.
1. My Canon PIXMA iP4500 inkjet printer used to work perfectly as a printer attached to the USB port of my Airport Extreme Model A1034 modem, when my computer communicates with the modem either wirelessly or via an ethernet connection between the computer and Airport, but lately it isn’t working.
2. When I try to print the printer icon shows up in the dock and when I click on it a Canon iP4500 series printer dialog box pops up and says the Printer is Ready but the status of the document is “Stopped”.
3. If I click on “Resume” and error message appears: “Operation could not be completed. client-error-not-possible”. This happen repeatedly.
4. I recycled the modem, turned the printer off and on (and did those things in reverse) and ran Airport Utility, all to no avail. I also deleted the printers in my Print & Fax System Preferences dialog box, downloaded the latest CUPS driver from Canon (ver 10.1.0.0), and recreated the printer (called Canon iP4500 Series).
5. Network diagnostics says it can connect to the internet over either my airport or Ethernet connection but it cannot connect to the Canon iP4500 series.riousbprint.tcp.local.
6. Also when I run the Canon IJ Printer Utility from the Canon iP4500 series printer dialog box a Printer List dialog box shows up with no USB-attached printers listed
7. I can print if I connect the printer directly to my MacBook Pro, so I don’t think it’s a driver or USB cable problem. Curiously, when I connect the printer directly to the computer the Print & Fax dialog box automatically creates a second printer called Canon iP4500 series-1. If I use the original Canon iP4500 Series printer in this setup it says “No pages found”.
Basically I’m stumped at this point and would appreciate some help. Unfortunately, I’m on a 3-mo sabbatical and do not have my original Canon printer software with me so I cannot reinstall the printer app unless someone knows how I can obtain it. Similarly I cannot reinstall Leopard either, though it doesn’t seem likely I should need to. Happy to try anything else though.

Answer 1

Hello Basil and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Reading your post, it would suggest there is a problem with the USB of the Airport Extreme, but I don't believe this to be case as there is not much that could go wrong with them. Instead I think there is something not right with the transport (TCP) protocols that get the data from your Mac to the Airport USB.
At this stage, I suggest you look at installing version 5.23 of the Gutenprint driver. This version supports your iP4500 and will help to narrow the cause of the current symptom.
Before installing the Gutenprint driver, I suggest we trash all the current Canon drivers you have installed - we can add them again later if need be.
Open Finder and navigate to Mac HD/Library/Printers/Canon/BJPrinter. Trash all the contents of this folder and empty the trash.
Next, navigate to the Mac HD/Library/Receipts folder. You will see the Canon iP4500 xxx.pkg and another one for the CUPS driver you installed. Trash both of these and empty also.
Now open System Preferences > Print & Fax and delete all the Canon printers in the list (highlight and hit ' - '). It would also be handy to reset the printing system, so while in Print & Fax, move your mouse over the now empty printers list, hold down your Control key and click (or right-click if you can). Click on Reset printing system when it appears.
Now install the Gutenprint drivers. When this is done, restart your Mac and try adding the iP4500 again. This time, after you select the Airport shared printer, you will have to open Print Using and search for the 'Canon iP4500 - Gutenprint v5.2.3'. Select this and now try printing. Let me now the result.
PaHu