Another Mac to Windows print issue

Maybe I'm missing something basic here? I'm trying to get a mac book X 10.6.8 to print to a windows XP shared usb printer Canon MX310. All looks good from the XP side and the mac can see the windows workgroup, the xp node name and the shared printer name when you hit + to add a new printer. When I send a print job off it just sits in the mac print queue with a status of 'printing' but nothing ever starts up. Any ideas? Thanks

Do you have an appropriate print driver installed on the Mac? You've made a network connection to it, but the Mac doesn't know how to format the job. It's likely defaulted to using a "Generic Postscript Driver", which the printer doesn't work with.

Unfortunately, Apple has done us Mac users a real disservice when sharing printers - it doesn't provide a framework for the actual port configuration of the driver, instead, it leaves that up to the printer manufacturer. So, even if you install the driver, you may find that it expects the printer to be connected via USB and won't make itself available when configuring a network port.

In those cases, you may be able to get by with a Gutenprint/CUPS printer driver, which is a series of open source drivers bundled with OS X, but it's not always easy to find the exact model of printer supported by those drivers.

In a nutshell, it's much easier just to buy a printer with built-in networking. You'll likely save yourself a ton of heartache and time by doing this.

More information here:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/internet-networking-wireless/54851-networking-printers-faq.html

I had already gone to the Canon support page and downloaded and installed their latest Mac driver for the mx310. No happy time with that either. Just as an aside.......
When you suggest using 'a printer with built-in networking', I assume a wireless printer would fit that description along with printers with NICs. True? Thanks for the info.

salzerrw said:

and installed their latest Mac driver for the mx310.

Click to expand...

As cwa107 was saying, the driver from Canon for its USB-only printers is a USB-only driver. It doesn't know how to send print data via network.

Try using a near-by Canon model driver from Gutenprint - MP280 or MP360, etc.