Resolved Printing over AirPort Express stopped working

[Bengt77]

I have a problem that's driving me nuts. I'm getting mightily desperate, to be honest. I have to solve it for my peace of mind before I can do anything else. And that is while it's a beautiful day outside. Man, this sucks. However, here goes...

In the meter cupboard (if that's even a word) I have an AirPort Extreme base station. In the living room I have an AirPort Express to which an HP Color LaserJet CP1515n is hooked up. Yesterday I decided to move the AirPort Express a little, so that I'd get better reception further back in the house. The USB cable with which the printer was connected to the AirPort Express was too short to reach the new spot, so I used an other, longer cable. I also changed the AirPort Express from extending the b/g network to extending the a/n network. No big deal.

But!

Today my printer isn't working anymore. It used to work beautifully before moving the AirPort Express. Yes, I've since tried going back to extending the b/g network. And yes, I've checked the cable. When directly hooked up to my MacBook, the printer works wonderfully with that same cable.

But when connected to the AirPort Express the printer fails miserably. It goes into paused mode with the following message: "Unable to write print data: Broken pipe". Extremely annoying! The printer starts flashing its activity light, but nothing happens. I've even seen the printer software not generating this message and still not printing anything while endlessly flashing the activity light. What the heck?

I've seen many discussions in the Apple Support Communities (this discussion is the longest and most thorough), but no person with these sorts of problems seems to have found an answer.

Where did this problem come from? Just the other day it was all working beautifully. I don't understand! Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[higgalls]

Hey,

Did you recently upgrade to 10.6.8? If so, that is your problem.

That OSX update has stuffed up a lot of printing for people (myself included).

So far I haven't seen anything to suggest Apple acknowledges it as a problem though.

You can try reading this thread here which has a temporary solution: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3137602?start=150&tstart=0

 

[Bengt77]

Is that really true? Man, if so, that would seriously blow. Why would Apple have done that? Is this an initiative to phase out support in Lion for a whole bunch of printers? Or is is just something they missed and will be addressed in a future update? In 10.6.9, for example? I'll go check out that discussion and see if I can get it up and running again. It's seriously annoying.

EDIT: I checked some discussions on Apple's Support Communities and am seeing a lot of trouble with 10.6.8 and network printing. So now I'm wondering if by 'network printing' one solely means a network printer that is, in itself, networked (either via WiFi or via ethernet), or also USB printers that are hooked up to a network by an AirPort base station. Anybody?

 

[Bengt77]

Tried it. Didn't work. Also tried the script on the 'Repair10.6.8.dmg' disk image. Also didn't work. Man, this is frustrating!

 

[Bengt77]

Yay, I have my printer working again!

Fed up with everything, I gave up trying to get it to work over USB. My HP Color LaserJet CP1515n is a network printer, so it also has an ethernet port. I just connected it via ethernet to the AirPort Express. That meant I had to give up network extension, as in that mode the Express doesn't allow ethernet clients. So now it merely joins the existing WiFi network created by my AirPort Extreme.

Printing is back to how it's supposed to work; I'm a happy camper again.

 

[Dave Felix]

Hey,

Did you recently upgrade to 10.6.8? If so, that is your problem.

That OSX update has stuffed up a lot of printing for people (myself included).

So far I haven't seen anything to suggest Apple acknowledges it as a problem though.

You can try reading this thread here which has a temporary solution: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3137602?start=150&tstart=0

Thats crazy.. because out of no where my computer wont even show "nearby printers". I decided to get 10.6.8 like last week and I cant print a damn thing. What about iPhones? How come my iphone cant find the printer on the wifi network?

 

[Bengt77]

Yeah, looks like Apple seriously screwed up with 10.6.8 when it comes to printing. Maybe this is Apple way of saying printers are going bye-bye.