print monitor disabled after OSX upgrade

Hi gang, hoping someone here may be able to shed some light on a brain destroying problem I have with my G6 iMac. I recently upgraded from Tiger 10.1.4 to Leopard 10.5.8, reset permissions, and all seemed great. Then I noticed I couldn't print to my A3 printer Canon i6100. Reloaded the printer driver obtained for 10.5 off the Canon website. Didn't work. Removed then reinstalled the driver, and the driver for my old HP Laserjet 6MP. Still didn't work. Discovered the Print Center and Printer setup utility apps were missing from the Applications>Utilities folder, so I copied them from the backup of the old system because they didn't load again after trying to reinstall from the additional items off the Leopard install disk. Now Print Center won't open, just crashes, the ppd (printer drivers) are grayed out when I try to print to the Canon, and I am losing my marbles trying to sort the problem as I've always been able to keep my Mac's running smoothly. Until now. Anyone got any ideas? I'd be eternally grateful.

Welcome to Mac-Forums!

Had a similar problem with a client's Canon 640. Turned out it was incorrect installation procedure. Had to remove ALL Canon software - the lot! That included previous Canon drivers, .plist etc. Used a third-party uninstaller - CleanApp. Searched for any remaining Canon files with Cmd-F (Finder). Rebooted OS X.

Reinstalled appropriate software from the 640 CD - must NOT connect printer during that time.

Connected printer (USB) and powered on. Opened Canon software (MP Navigator in this case) - all tickety-boo!

Perhaps you might try those procedures - with adjustments for your model of Canon printer as required.

thanks hughvane ... arghh that means all my camera drivers too, presumably, as some files are difficult to identify? I'll try anything, though, so will let you know if it works!

Leopard compromises printer functions

aha! well after much mind boggling research, it appears print center is no longer part of the utilities and in fact all printing is managed through system preferences print and fax. I guess that accounts for it crashing on open I tried hughvane's suggestion and it worked partially in that the hp printer responded but not the canon, so I had to load the print drivers from the Leopard disk (1.2gb - grr) and the updates from hp and canon. So now they both work, but the functionality of the canon is severely compromised, in that cmyk isn't a choice I can make in either the app or canon print dialogue menu's despite it being a cmyk printer. Useful, eh? However, after trawling through 5 million forums, I see I am not alone in this and it seems a common problem which I hope will be fixed at the speed of light. If anyone knows anywhere for a patch for this problem I would be very, very, very VERY happy to hear about it.

Well, well, and there have been developments in my situation (the client's actually). His Canon 640 will not scan (see my post Canon Cannot), although everything else works, So I was not right to say "all tickety-boo".

Canon Help (NZ) sent a list of things to do, and I'll forward that to you as a PM. Hopefully it'll help your "compromised" situation. This really bugs me too, since Canon hardware is usually so reliable with the MacOS.

Keep on Canon's case about the cmyk malfunction, as I'd say that only it can provide a solution.