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Slow printing - sometimes hours.???

M

MacVault

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2002
1,144
59
Planet Earth
Can anyone tell me why in the world some of my print jobs take SOOOO LONG to print? Most things print pretty quick - within a few seconds, and then once in a while I'll come across a webpage or a PDF that will take hours before it actually spits out of the printer.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.2.6 on a 12" Powerbook with 640MB RAM, printing directly to an HP LaserJet 1200 via USB cable.

Yesterday I tried to print a webpage from Safari. The page was about two pages, and very basic, a couple small graphics, a few tables, nothin major, mostly just text. I tried printing directly from Safari in the morning, came back 4 or 5 hours later and it still hadn't printed. The green light on the printer was still blinking as is normal when receiving a print job. Anyway, it had been so long and I had to take my powerbook somewhere else so I just said heck with it and unplugged the printer effectively canceling the print job which I started hours earlier.

So, later I came back to the same page in Safari, went to the print dialog and told it to save as PDF. Then I opened it in Adobe Reader 6.0 and tried to print if from there as a PDF. It finally printed the first page after about 4 hours.

Then I had an idea to select and copy the text straight off of the webpage, paste it into MS Word, and print from there. It worked fine. Printed from word in about 5 seconds, which is normal.

Anyone have this problem? I just don't get it. I know the laser printer has only 8MB of RAM but the file I was trying to print was only a few KB.

I can print a 40MB image just fine in a couple minutes, but certain other things just don't print at all or they take hours before printing.

Is this a problem with OS X, the printer drivers, or the printer itself? I had the same problem with my previous laser printer, so I'm convinced it's some problem in OS X.

It's DRIVING ME NUTS!!!
 
Only thing I can say is that i have experienced the same thing!!! It seems to be a problem with Safari. But I also get it using Preview as well. I have an Apple Colorlaserwriter 12/660.
 
Huh, I've never had this issue. Have you tried deleting the printer selection in Print Center? After you delete it just choose add to add it back again. Also try reinstalling the drivers making sure to have the latest ones. Be sure to delete your old drivers first.

Also it's quite possible it's a permissions fault or a USB glitch.
 
This is just a wild guess, but does your problem happen only with web pages from a certain web site? If so, it could be that the page has huge images on it, scaled (by HTML height and width tags) to appear smaller on the screen. They would look the same way in Acrobat. When you print the pages, the entire image would be sent to the printer, which is overwhelmed by the RAM requirements and resorts to handling the image in many passes, leading to the huge print time. If this theory is right, the PDF file should be huge, even if it is only 2 pages on the screen.
 
Yes, I have tried deleting the printer in the Print Center and then re adding it.

I've had the problem a few times with a few different websites and PDFs, but what really gets me is that converting the webpage to PDF does not even help. I get the same problem as when printing from Safari.

As I said in my original post, the file size is just a few KB - the webpage or the PDF. It still takes hours, if it prints at all, but I can open a 40MB image in Photoshop and print it just fine. Why would that work and not a webpage of a few KBs????
 
I've got the same problem w/ my LaserJet 1200... its so annoying... its not a USB problem since mine is hooked through a printer server.
 
I have the Problem with PDF'S

I have the same problem but only with PDF's. I am printing to a networked HP Laserjet. I mean, it works, but most of the time I have to wait FOREVER... It happens with Preview, Photoshop, Illustartor and Acrobat Reader. I've also noticed that it happens ALL the time with documents I have scanned with VueScan originally and then converted to PDF.
 
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I am fighting this problem at my Mac client.

I started working on it last week under Jaguar. Now I am working on it under Panther. They have 5 Laserjet 1200's, and they will have my head if I upgrade them to X and they cannot print in a reasonable amount of time.

I have one 1300 on the network, and FYI I swapped it with a 1200 on a Mac via USB and now that computer is printing fine.

I am now trying to get the 1200's to print fast via jetdirect. (and I will forget about USB.) Any clues would be appreciated. I know MacFixit has an article on it, but you have to be a paid subscriber to view it. :(

By the way, I have the problems on a new eMac running Jag, and my TiBook running Panther. I haven't checked permissions after the install of panther, but I think this is more of an HP firmware problem. :(

They are upgrading from OS 9 to Panther as soon as I figure this problem out. :D I guess it is time to call HP....
 
slow printing in leopard

So, how I fixed the slow printing issue in Leopard using CUPS and Gutenprint:
-the printer was not printing fast like it was in Tiger. (1 min. in between the single pages and 2 min. waiting before the first page print).
-the printer model is HP LaserJet 1200
1. In System Preferences click Print & Fax and find printer in the list.
2. Right click on it and pick Reset Printing System.
3. Install gutenprint-5.0.0.U.dmg from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1537&package_id=143930&release_id=435706
4. Click "Options & Supplies" in Print & Fax in System Preferences.
5. Choose Driver pane, then in print using choose "Select a drivers to use..."
6. Find your printer driver with 'CUPS+Gutenprint' at the end.

That's how I fixed it, not sure whether it works with the other printer model.

:apple: Mac OS X (10.5)
 
Acrobat Reader 9 vs Reader 4.1

Printing with Acrobat over Airport is very slow.. It takes ages. Reverting to open the pdf and printing with Mac Reader really made the difference. First few pages were spooled almost intantly, the rest comes out after some buffering. Tthere is some buffering slowness but this is likely due to the printer memory.
HTH
 
Acrobat printing speed makes snails look like speed demons

I have an iMac 2.96 GHz running OS 10.5.7, and two HP printers: B&W Laserwriter p2015dn and Color Laserwriter 3600n. I have used Acrobat since it was invented. The new versions of Acrobat Pro 9.1.1 and Reader 9.1.1 print pdfs very slowly, more so on the b&W (which has 256 megs of memory) than the color machine. I never had these problems with older (ver. 8, 7 and older) versions of Acrobat. Both printers have the latest HP drivers. Connections to both are ethernet, through Time Machine router. Any thoughts?I see that I have some company in my frustration. It doesn't seem to matter whether the docs are simple (text only) or complex.
 
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