HP LJ 1300 Ready light flashes then intermittently fails to print

I've a puzzling intermittent problem. I try to print one or more web pages, .PDFs or .PNGs the Mac acts like it’s sending the job to the printer. The HP LJ 1300’s Ready light flashes repeatedly as if it is receiving data, then it stops flashing and nothing happens. This only happens sometimes. Most of the time it prints perfectly. On some occasions it will print a Postscript error at the top, e.g., “ERROR: syntaxerror OFFENDING COMMAND: 1.U.”

When it fails I will try printing the web page to a PDF file and then try to print that, using either Preview or Adobe Reader. It may or may not print from there. I will also try making a screen shot of the web page and will then try to print the resulting PNG file. Again, it may or may not print. Sometimes after repeated attempts the page will print.

Sometimes it seems I am more successful printing all the pages from a web page instead of one page or a range, but I am not sure if this is really the case. Since the problem is intermittent I can’t tell if printing Pages: All is really a work-around.

I also have the problem on certain pages of PDF owner manuals or other documents I’ve downloaded. I try to print a range of pages and one of them doesn’t print.

I have done the Mac Printing System reset procedure to no avail.

So I don't know whether this is a Mac problem, OS X problem, or a LaserJet problem. Ideas?


Mac Mini mid-2011
Mac OS X 10.9.5 -- Mavericks
Preview 7.0
Adobe Reader 10.1.13
Safari 7.1.5
Firefox 37.0.1
Chrome 38.0.x

If you've done the Mac Reset of the Printing system, that should load the latest Apple driver available for your HP. You might want to go to the HP website anyway and see if they may have a different driver listed for your printer. There are also third party drivers available for many HP LJ printers that sometimes work better than what is supplied by Apple. It's also possible that your HP LJ printer is acting up.

On the Apple site I found "HP Printer Drivers v3.0 for OS X," posted 9/30/2014 and installed it. It didn't seem to make a difference.

I happened to receive a two page contract PDF in email and used it for testing.

Results from Preview:
Pages: All printed successfully 3 times
Reverse All Pages printed successfully
Page 1 failed to print 3 times
Page 2 printed once, failed once
Odd pages only failed

Using Adobe Reader
Page 1 failed
Page 2 failed with printer out of memory condition lights

Generally, it's looking to me like it's something doing with OS X. (And yes, I can upgrade to Yosemite.) However, I'll be increasing the printer RAM since it's something that can be done very cheaply and easily and I'll see what happens. Amusingly and ironically, I could not print the one page RAM chip order summary page, even though I used Pages: All. Ha!

Looks to me that you have a flaky printer. Nothing about OS X is causing the problem you're experiencing. If you can add memory to the printer, go ahead and give that a try. I have a HP LJ that I use for B&W heavy work and have never run out of printer memory but I have seen that happen on older HP LJ models.