Mac – Why is the HP printer often ‘Busy’

hp-laserjetmacprinterprinting

I have an HP LaserJet P1005 printer, attached to an Airport Extreme 802.11n wireless router's USB port. The Airport is set to share the printer by Bonjour, and my laptop can see the printer.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.4, and my HP printer driver version is 1.3.0.261 (The latest version available via software update as of this date).

Sometimes (and yes, I know how useless 'sometimes' is in a bug report!) the printer will work — this was true, for example, last week — and other times (such as today) the printer is 'busy'. The printers' green status light is steady, but the print and fax preference pane shows the printer as busy, and I can't print anything to it.

I've cycled the power on the printer and deleted and re-added the printer, but this makes no difference.

What causes this? How can I fix it?

Best Answer

From Solution from CUPS author

I found this while researching my bonjour problem. It worked for me.

Re: Can't print after 10.5.2 install Posted: Feb 20, 2008 7:23 PM in response to: MTR300 Solved

The CUPS author created a small utility that should help with the 10.5.2 upgrade and the Airport problems:

http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/cups/contrib/FixAirportPrinter.dmg

Steps:

  1. Add Airport printer
  2. Run FixAirportPrinter application
  3. Double-click on printer in list (or click on printer and click on "Fix Printer" button)
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