Problem with HP printer and Laptop.

[Gjac]

I have an HPDeskjet printer 3940 and a Compaq Presario CQ60-420us laptop. When I go to print the power button on the printer is blinking. In the past when this happened I would go to control panel>printers and delete the documents in printing Que and the light would become solid again and I was able to print. Currently when I go to delete, one document remains and says deleting but takes for ever to delete. When it does printer still has blinking power light and fails to print. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Bill_Satellite]

Thanks for the follow-up. So many folks post and are never heard from again. It's always nice to see the fix. HP does have some utilities and apps that will provide the information about the printer status and if you don't have these installed, you should. However, it also possible to have the best of the best of the best (Men in Black reference) and still get bad information. Glad to hear that you found the correct solution.

[Gjac]

Just bought a new print cartridge at Staples and it works good. I asked the girl there if this was a common problem and she said sometimes the refills work or will work for a while then stop, sometimes the printer can't read the refill cartridge. I cleaned the thing off good with a paper towel and I could not see anything around the front where the printer is suppose to read the cartridge. Apparently the ink may coagulate some also where it comes out causing this problem. I guess it is new cartridges from now on.

[HappyKayakers]

Thanks for posting the update Gjac. Now we all know something else to check.

[Gjac]

I think I finally found the problem. After fooling with uninstalling installing printer etc. I removed the black cartridge and closed the lid and the blinking stopped cleaned cartridge with paper towel re installed started blinking again. I installed an empty black cartridge and the blinking stop, tried to print and it went through cycle. My conclusion is that I refilled the cartridge at Costco and it worked fine for awhile until a week ago. Has anyone else had this problem with Costco refills? I will buy a new one any try that out to be sure that is the problem. Thanks for your help.

[Gjac]

djgarcia wrote:
HP Printers???
The HP tech told me to disconnect the power cord from the printer for about 5 min. and then reconnect and start up. Fixed it for me.Tried this but the printer is still blinking.

Try disconnecting the cord from the wall.

That is what I did and let it sit overnight before reconnecting.

[MarkTwain]

HP Printers???
The HP tech told me to disconnect the power cord from the printer for about 5 min. and then reconnect and start up. Fixed it for me.Tried this but the printer is still blinking.

Try disconecting the cord from the wall.

[Gjac]

djgarcia wrote:
HP Printers???
The HP tech told me to disconnect the power cord from the printer for about 5 min. and then reconnect and start up. Fixed it for me.

Tried this but the printer is still blinking.

[MarkTwain]

HP Printers???
The HP tech told me to disconnect the power cord from the printer for about 5 min. and then reconnect and start up. Fixed it for me.

[Gjac]

HappyKayakers wrote:

Gjac wrote:

HappyKayakers wrote:
You may have something stuck in the print queue. There's an easy way to delete old/corrupt print jobs manually. Instructions are here.

I would also delete the printer, reboot the laptop, then plug the printer back in to let it re install.

I tried this and was able to delete the print queue, this worked good. Tried deleting printer by right clicking and hitting delete it goes away and after a while it shows up again. Rebooted both printer and laptop but still can't print. Printer is still blinking.

Not sure which OS you're running but in Win 7, I go into Devices and Printers, right click the printer, then click on Remove Device. The printer should be disconnected during this process. If you connect to it wirelessly, it should be turned off.

I have vista.

[HappyKayakers]

Gjac wrote:

HappyKayakers wrote:
You may have something stuck in the print queue. There's an easy way to delete old/corrupt print jobs manually. Instructions are here.

I would also delete the printer, reboot the laptop, then plug the printer back in to let it re install.

I tried this and was able to delete the print queue, this worked good. Tried deleting printer by right clicking and hitting delete it goes away and after a while it shows up again. Rebooted both printer and laptop but still can't print. Printer is still blinking.

Not sure which OS you're running but in Win 7, I go into Devices and Printers, right click the printer, then click on Remove Device. The printer should be disconnected during this process. If you connect to it wirelessly, it should be turned off.

[Gjac]

HappyKayakers wrote:
You may have something stuck in the print queue. There's an easy way to delete old/corrupt print jobs manually. Instructions are here.

I would also delete the printer, reboot the laptop, then plug the printer back in to let it re install.

I tried this and was able to delete the print queue, this worked good. Tried deleting printer by right clicking and hitting delete it goes away and after a while it shows up again. Rebooted both printer and laptop but still can't print. Printer is still blinking.

[1492]

Clay L wrote:
I had an job hung in the queue,had the same symptoms and tried to get rid of it with no luck. The HP tech had me un-install the printer software (HP Support Solutions Framework in the list) and reinstall it. That fixed the problem.

I would be more inclined to do this since you've had issues with the current driver in the past? Check HP if a newer driver version is available. Otherwise, reinstall.

This is assuming you're having problems printing with all documents? If its just when using a browser, then I would be a little suspicious as to the cause?

I had an issue where Firefox would not print, just stall in the Queue. All other browsers worked fine. It was Sweetpacks that somehow got installed from another program, which was corrupting the print process.

[wa8yxm]

How do you feel about batch file processing... Now some of this may need to be customized (I will look it over when I paste it in.. On my computer it is a file called DelPrintJob.cmd

No looks good,,, Just copy the net stop through net start spooler lines to NOTEPAD and sae as DelPrintJob.cmd put it in a path folder (or invoke it from file manager) this is for Windows xp.. Do not know if it will work on 7 or 8

What it does: Turn off print spooler
Delete all pending print jobs
Turn on print spooler
The Ping statements are just to waste time so operations complete.

Sometimes simply re-starting the computer will fix it.

OH, the line that MAY need editing is the line that starts with DEL.. This is the default path to the spooled files for XP, may be different on different machines.

net stop spooler
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.* /F /Q /S
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3
net start spooler

[Bill_Satellite]

First just try powering off the printer and while that's doing its job, reboot the computer. This nearly always clears the issue with my HP.