Can't print, digital camera not downloading, usb ports seem to not be functioning

[stubag]

Help! I'm not sure what has happened, but about a month ago, we have been unable to print to our Epson Workforce 500. The printer is plugged in properly and has power. I can print a test page using the EPSON aps, but when I try to print a document or picture I get a generic error.

In addition, our camera is no longer able to download to our mac. Both plug into USB ports. They used to work fine, and I'm not able to pinpoint exactly what changed on my computer to cause their recent failures.

We have a Power Mac G4, operating OS X 10.4.11

Any advice? Thanks.

 

[Chappers]

Have you rebuilt permissions recently?

Find Disk Utility and (probably in the Utilities folder in the applications folder) and select your hard disk on the left. Press the "repair disk permissions" button. You might also go and get something like http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26808 that will help tidy up your Mac.

Let us know how you got on.

Hope that helps

 

[9822737]

Possibly try System Profiler as well just to check USB ports are fully functional?

AnDy

 

[stubag]

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately, neither installing the versiontracker softwater or running the disk repair permissions worked. I also looked on SystemProfiler, when I highlight USB the device tree is showing the hub in Apple Pro Keyboard, whic has my camera listed, and my mouse (which works fine), and shows the USB Bus, which doesn't mention my printer (not sure if it should or not)

But alas, still no picture downloading, and now document printing. Any other suggestions? I appreciate the advice so far.

 

[Chappers]

Have you tried using another USB port ?

Can you try it on another computer?

 

[stubag]

I have tried other USB ports to no avail. And now, I think I made the problem worse. I deleted the printer from the printer utility setup and tried to add it again, and now get an error:

"An error occured while trying to add the selected printer. Error 13"

And, the camera still is not being recognized.

UPDATE: When I try to load the printer drivers from my epson CDROM again, it prompts me to authenticate to enter in my admin password. When I do this, it says it's that "the software to be installed requires Administrator or higher level access privileges." But when I check my account settings, I have administrator priviledges. We only have one account setup, and it's setup for administrator rights. Could this be the cause of all of my problems? What's the fix?

 

[Chappers]

Have you got any other machine that you could test the printer on (Mac or PC)

I don't understand the bit about you needing admin privileges when you have them. Something is corrupted somewhere

Your Mac is a little old (OK its very old)- it may be reaching end of life. I had several G4 towers but gave up about 3 years ago.

It sounds bad for the USB ports.

I've search the forums for you and keep reading the same thing basically - but don't see much in the way of answers.

Repair permissions
Reset PRAM (find out how to do it for your G4)
Re-install MACOSX
Buy replacement parts on ebay.

Buy a new machine

Sorry not to be more helpful.