part of the Andy West Page:
VendPrint is a program that monitors the flow of print jobs from our public workstations to our public printers, tracking information on each job printed by each public printer. It runs off of special-purpose computers called release stations, which hold print jobs for up to two hours while users work on other projects.
PrinterOn is a Web service that allows laptops to send print jobs to some of our public printers via the World Wide Web. A print job are sent from the laptop to a remote server, which in turn sends the print job to the appropriate release station.
What happens when a user sends a print job to a public printer?
paused).
PrinterOn adds the steps of sending a print job to a remote server, which sorts out where the job is supposed to go, then sends the job to the appropriate input queue, from which VendPrint takes over.
Since the print jobs are on the print server rather than on the release stations, the jobs will be there for users even if the release stations are rebooted.
A print job remains in the input queue for two hours, at which point VendPrint deletes the job.
The make and model of most of our public printers are the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 8150dn. All the printers have four trays (with the 2000-sheet feeder designated tray four), all of which are set in the printers to plain letter paper. The dn in the model number means that:
That last point means that when a printer is swapped, the network cards was exchanged. Card-swapping saves time in having to reprogram the card, and saves conflict problems if swapped printers with the same IP address were connected to the network at the same time.
The Architecture and SHS libraries have the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4300n for their public printers. Architecture has three trays (the third being a 1500-sheet feeder); SHSL has only two. Otherwise the printers are set up the same.
The release stations are set up in kiosk mode, in which VendPrint is the only program running. If it is gone, do a Control-Alt-Delete to bring up Windows Security; press Shut Down, choose Restart from the dropdown list, and press OK. VendPrint will come back up after the restart. No print jobs will be lost.
It is possible that the user sent a print job to one printer, thinking that it is sent to another. Check all the release stations first.
If the print job is not found, it is likely that the job did made it into the input queue, but is so malformed that VendPrint cannot recognize it as a print job. If so, the job is unprintable; it will remain in the queue until it is removed by hand.
This kind of print job happens so seldomly that there are only less than ten problem tickets for it. VendPrint has never figured out why this happened, even though I found and submitted samples of print jobs that cause this in the release station.
Fortunately, as I noted, this kind of print job is rare.
This kind of problem is usually associated with error 79.x, explained below.
This happens when a public printer is turned off during a print job. The output queue simply pauses, waiting for the printer to come back on. After the printer is switched back on, the print job resumes: But, without any idea of the format of the print job, the printer works on raw data, printing junk characters on page after page.
The best thing to do is to hit the Cancel button on the printer panel until the print job disappears.
PDF files from the online services, like EBSCO, sometimes behave in strange ways, especially in printing one or a few pages and then skipping the rest. You can get around this in the Print dialog box by pressing the Advanced button, checkmarking Print As Image, and pressing OK twice.
Print jobs can be removed from the queues only by LITS staff, such as for deleting malformed jobs from the input queue or jobs in the output queue to relieve an error 79 problem.
VendPrint could be set up on the release stations to allow users to delete print jobs. But there would be the issue of users deleting the print jobs of other users, either accidentally or on purpose. That's why we keep that off.
It is not possible to redirect a print job from one printer to another when the first printer is down. The user will have to send the print job to another printer.
The Wireless Printing FAQ covers most of the problems associated with wireless laptop printing. In summary:
Such documents have to be converted into a printable format (Office 2003, PDF, plain text, JPEG/GIF/PNG/BMP images) before uploading them to PrinterOn.
When a user reports that they cannot print to wireless printing, first check the source program and the extension of the document they are trying to print. If the document is in an unprintable format, the Wireless Printing site will give the user an error message and will not pass the print job on.
The maximum number of pages a user can print from their laptop is thirty (30) pages. This has been set to encourage paper conservation, and is enforced from the server end. If a user prints more than thirty pages, the job will cut off at the thirtieth page.
If the user must print more than thirty pages, they will have to break up the document, or (better) in the Print box use Print Range to print in thirty-page segments.
A mass inability to print from laptops may be caused by either
Let LITS know at once so that we can contact UCS (for campus wireless loss) or the PrinterOn company (for server loss) to get the problem resolved.
iMacs in Reference print to printer #2. iMacs in Education Resources print to printer #7. This was decided early on when printing became available because in Reference printer #2 is the closest of the public printers that was least busy.
iBooks and MacBooks use wireless laptop printing.
This can happen, but it does not mean printer #2/#7 is not available. Have the user choose Public Printer #2/#7 from the printer list in the Print dialog box.
When this happens it is okay to have Mac users print via wireless laptop printing until the printers are back online.
Printing to the Canon color printers on either Reference or Periodical/Reserve is not available to the iMacs because Canon does not make the same custom driver used by the Windows workstations available to Mac OS X.
A printer is good for a given number of pages (350,000 for an 8150dn, 200,000 for a 4300n). When that limit is passed, you will see the message Perform Printer Maintenance
on the printer panel.
There is nothing wrong with the printer itself. It will be fine for a few thousand pages more until LITS installs a maintenance kit, which includes new paper rollers, a new transfer roller, and a new fuser. After the kit is installed the maintenance page count is reset; the kit is run through its paces with a paper path test; and the printer is good to go.
Paper takes a winding path through the printer until it reaches the toner bay. There toner goes from the cartridge to the paper by the transfer roller; the fuser bonds the toner to the paper by intense heat; and the paper comes out into the output bin.
Here is a diagram of an 8150dn with points along the paper path where jams can occur.
The most common causes of paper jams are:
LITS can replace worn rollers and fusers, and clean out excess toner and paper clay.
The internal partitions in the trays have trianglar marks that show the upper limit for paper. Do not load paper higher than these marks. Use only smooth, whole paper in the trays.
After checking the parts of the diagram for jams, you should also remove the toner cartridge, left the green handle in front, and check for accordian
papers. Check the back of the output bin, for sometimes paper jams hide in there. Check the fuser, lifting the green tabs and very carefully removing the accordian
paper.
If, after all this, you still get paper jam messages, it is time for LITS to swap the printer.
Squeaks can be caused by the same problems that cause paper jams. Or they can come from defective toner cartridges. If neither are the source of the squeaks it is time to swap the printer.
Streaks may be dark or light. They may go horizontally or vertically across every page, or every other page, or every few pages. Streaks are usually caused by a leaking toner cartridge. Replace the cartridge. If the streaks continue, then the fuser is at fault, and must be replaced by LITS.
Ghost text is the faint impression of a text on subsequent print jobs. The text has been burned into the fuser's heating element. The fuser will have to be replaced by LITS.
Faded text is a sign that the toner cartridge is out of toner, whether the cartridge was newly packaged or not. Replace the toner cartridge.
The fuser is broken and no longer bonding the toner on the pages. The fuser will have to be replaced by LITS.
The toner cartridge is broken inside, delivering a burst of toner badness. Have LITS come down to sweep out the toner bay. Then replace the toner cartridge.
A glitch has happened in the fuser. Turning the printer off and on usually fixes the problem. If not, LITS will swap the printer.
The printer is wrestling with a badly-formed print job in the output queue. This is a LITS fix: The printer is turned off; the output queue is flushed of all its jobs (not just the bad one); and the printer is turned back on.