Recently Switched, issues printing

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Hello everyone,

I am about 3 weeks into my switch into the world of Mac and have to say that I can never see myself going back (only out of necessity for work) to a pc. I absolutely love it. For the record, I ended up with a 27inch iMac that it totally stunning.

Anyway, unfortunately, we don't have the funds to upgrade the other computers in our house yet. We will, but as money allows. Having said that, another computer in my home office is a pc running Vista...I know, I know.

So I get my iMac setup (very easily I might add), and get my printer going just fine on my iMac. Prints beautifully, and very simply.

The problem I'm having, is with my other pc that I'm trying to get working through the network to print.

My setup is that I have a Xerox Phaser 8560MFP that I now have connected to my iMac through USB. I have it shared.

I was able to install it fine on my pc and it will print a test page 100% of the time.

But the kicker is that it will actually print about 70% of the time with no problem. But then all of a sudden it will just not work at all. I go into "Printers" on the pc and get a message about "unable to connect, access denied".

I reboot the pc many times, do a bunch of other random junk and somehow, some way, it just will work again and will continue to work for a while until again, boom it will just stop and get the same message.


Anyone have any ideas for me to try to get this consistently working?

Thank you all for your time.

Steve
 

chscag

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Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Download the free "Bonjour Print Services for Windows" from Apple. Install it on the PC and you should be able to get the Xerox Phaser to print from the PC.

Let us know if you need more assistance.
 
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M
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Thank you very much! I do however have a question. Do you know why it would print fine from it most of the time? Again, it seems to print just fine 70% of the time. But then all of a sudden it just won't work for a while.

Do you think that this Bonjour software would help with that scenario?

Thank you again for your assistance.

Steve


Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Download the free "Bonjour Print Services for Windows" from Apple. Install it on the PC and you should be able to get the Xerox Phaser to print from the PC.

Let us know if you need more assistance.
 

Slydude

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I had a similar problem with a Minolta laser printer. In my case the problem seemed to have something to do with the print buffer not clearing. It would print fine and then suddenly not at all. Turning the printer off then waiting a few seconds before turning it on again usually cleared the problem for me.
 
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chas_m

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Sylvester's probably hit the nail on the head, but you might also consider the energy settings on the Mac. If the hard drive is set to spin down when not in use, the act of spinning it back up to accommodate an incoming print job (or, more obviously, if the machine is sleeping at the time) might cause enough of a delay that the PC thinks the connection is not working.

Most users who are on the computer a lot should probably uncheck the "spin down hard drives" option in Energy Saver. Very light-duty users who like to keep the computer on but sleeping or inactive most of the time should leave the "spin down hard drive" option checked, IME.
 

Slydude

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I didn't think of that Chas_m. Wouldn't have helped in my case since the printer was connected to a router with print server capabilities. Might help the OP though.
 

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