SOLVED Windows 10 is unable to print

[hdhondt]

I have had this problem for a while, and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that only a complete reformat/reinstall will help.

Here's the problem: Windows 10 Home is unable to use any printer driver. If I try to print a test page, I get the message "The test page failed to print". If I print from any application, no error messages appear, but no output is produce. I have the following drivers installed:

Fax
Microsoft print to PDF
Microsoft XPS document wiriter
Fuji Xerox Docuprint CM305DF

All of them have the same problem. Drivers like PDF or XPS ask for a file name, but then no file is created.

I have tried running SFC /SCANNOW, CHKDSK, and hard disk test utilities. I have reinstalled Windows 10 from CD (keeping programs and data). All this has not made any difference. Windows 10 is fully up-to-date. I have heaps of space on both the boot disk (SSD) and the main data disk (1TB). Here are some of the details of the system:

Version 10.0.10586 Build 10586
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz, 3700 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0311, 31/08/2015
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Boot Disk Size 111.30 GB (119,507,251,200 bytes), free space 79GB
Data Disk Size 931.51 GB (1,000,202,039,296 bytes), free space 862GB

The system is only about 3 months old, and initially it worked flawlessly. I have ZoneAlarm and MalwareBytes installed. Both are fully up-to-date.

I should add that, occasionally, a print does succeed, but the very next attempt will fail again.

What can I do to get printing, without reformatting my hard disk?

 

[Trouble]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
Have you downloaded and installed the latest driver for your Fuji / Xerox printer from here
http://onlinesupport.fujixerox.com/...n&pid=DPCM305DF&source=fxpc&cid=2#prettyPhoto

Before doing so, I would suggest that you consider first, uninstalling any and all instances of any previous installation of that printer, removing it from Devices and Printers, double check Device Manager and make sure that it's gone and then make sure you use the Control Panel, Programs and Features Applet to remove any associated Software. Turn it off and Physically disconnect the printer from the computer.

After doing so, reboot leaving the printer disconnected and test the XPS and or the Print to PDF function and see if they resume working.
IF not..... open the Services Management Console
Right click the start button and choose "run" and in the run dialog box type
services.msc
hit enter or click OK.
Scroll as needed and find "Print Spooler", make sure that it is "Running" and that the Startup Type is set to "Automatic"
Right click it and choose restart and try the Print to PDF again or the XPS printer function or both.

IF that seems to work, then install / reinstall the driver / software package you downloaded above. I suspect at some point during the installation you'll be prompted to connect to the printer, at which point......
Turn it back on and reconnect it to the computer.

 

[Tim Locke]

^^^^ Also Before downloading and after deleting the printer start Task Manager and check that there is nothing to do with the printer in Startup...some background task... HP is bad for this don't know about other printers.

 

[Norton]

I had exactly the same problem, I could print no problem one day then not the next. The only options I had was as you explained
Fax
Microsoft print to PDF
Microsoft XPS document writer
HP LaserJet (my printer)
However I could only select Fax, Microsoft print to PDF (was the default) and Microsoft XPS document wiriter
I found the problem which I had created a few days earlier. That is, in "Settings" > Network and Internet I changed Wifi connection to "Metered" because I was running low on my monthly data plan after upgrading 4 PC's and the MB/GB of MS critical updates. Check and see if your WiFi connection is set to "Metered"
Good Luck! Please keep us posted of you progress/success.

 

[Trouble]

Thanks Norton.
An interesting discovery. The printer itself does not seem to have any wireless capabilities only USB 2.0 and integrated Gig Ethernet, however
IF it's plugged in to your switch port on your wireless router and your machine is using wireless to send the print job then I can see how that setting might be an issue, strange but still worth considering.
Not sure how that could impact the XPS and PDF gizmos as they're just print to file pretend printers but I guess they still use the printer subsystems so ..... bork one, bork them all I guess.

 

[Norton]

Trouble I apologize. I should have indicated that my printer HP LaserJet P1102w has wired, wireless connectivity, USB- WiFi. interface. The problem (WiFi metered ) I created as with most Windows 10 problems. No tweking folks until the final version is released in a few weeks. Hopefully we will all be on the same page, bug/glitch free.

 

[hdhondt]

@Trouble I have tried all your suggestions before, and again now, with no change.
@Tim Locke Xerox printers behace a lot nicer than HP, and they do not create anything in Startup
@Norton My printer is USB connected, and it's a desktop PC, without WiFi

 

[Trouble]

WOW.... three strikes.
I suppose you've also tried booting the computer into plain old ordinary Safe Mode and tested to see if the problem still persisted?

@Trouble I have tried all your suggestions before, and again now, with no change.

The last time I had to deal with a problem such as this it involved a Lexmark printer and Windows 10 the remedy involved the steps I outlined above (that you've already tried and retried) plus launching the registry editor and manually searching for Lexmark, there was a lot of F3 (find next) involved but after it was over and rebooted the re-installation of the software / driver package went as expected and the printer worked like it should.
I'm not suggesting that this is a fix for your particular problem, as I recall his issue seemed to be throwing a lot of communication errors, but.....
It might be worth the effort before you resort to

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that only a complete reformat/reinstall will help

Additionally before you resort to that you might want to consider an in-place upgrade repair. That is to say...... upgrade it again, overtop of itself from within your current install, just double click setup.exe in the installation media. Just be sure to check the little box to get updates as part of the upgrade process.
That will generally keep all your programs, data, drivers and such safe, but.....
I would still create a disk image before going forward.

Installation media can be obtained here
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench


If you already have the ISO you can simply mount it from within Windows 10 and run setup.exe from there.

Neosmart has a pretty good article on it here https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/
You can skip the first couple paragraphs where they are promoting their recovery CDs and drill down to the meat of the article below.

 

[Norton]

@Trouble I have tried all your suggestions before, and again now, with no change.
@Tim Locke Xerox printers behace a lot nicer than HP, and they do not create anything in Startup
@Norton My printer is USB connected, and it's a desktop PC, without WiFi

Did your printer work with Win 7 or 8.1? Assuming you were using one of the mentioned O/S

 

[hdhondt]

@Trouble
Removing the driver is the first thing I tried (before I realised that XPS and PDF drivers do not work either. It made no difference. I have not hacked it out of the registry but, remember XPS and PDF have the same problem.

Booting into Safe mode does not help, as there is no printing in Safe mode.

I've run Windows Setup from the CD before. No difference. This is what makes me think that the only option will be to format the SSD and reinstall - unless someone can tell me what the real problem is. I have not done that yet. I started once, but Win10 told me it cannot do a clean install unless the disk has a GPT partition (currently it's MBR). I know I can fix that, but it begs the question: how did Win10 get on this new PC in the first place?

@Norton Yes, the printer worked fine in Win7 - as did XPS and PDF drivers. I avoided Win8, but felt that Win10 was worth a try. Maybe Win10 senses that I do not like it. I wish I had bought Win7 with this PC, to upgrade after M$ clean up the mess that is Win10 (Win12, perhaps?)

 

[hdhondt]

Have we all given up?

 

[hdhondt]

I'm not sure, but I suspect the problem is Win10's feature of automatically installing and upgrading printer drivers. I first noticed that when, after I had removed the printer driver, a message popped up that it was installed again - after I manually reinstalled it.

I have since run Tweaking.com's Windows repair twice. After the first run the XPS and PDF drivers worked, so I removed the printer driver (and noticed that I could not delete the install package - I suspect that's because Win10 installs its own driver).After that I ran the repair utility again, and then manually installed the driver from the Fuji Xerox Website. I have also disabled Win10's auto printer installation. Since then it's been working.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Shellie]

I'm not sure, but I suspect the problem is Win10's feature of automatically installing and upgrading printer drivers. I first noticed that when, after I had removed the printer driver, a message popped up that it was installed again - after I manually reinstalled it.

I have since run Tweaking.com's Windows repair twice. After the first run the XPS and PDF drivers worked, so I removed the printer driver (and noticed that I could not delete the install package - I suspect that's because Win10 installs its own driver).After that I ran the repair utility again, and then manually installed the driver from the Fuji Xerox Website. I have also disabled Win10's auto printer installation. Since then it's been working.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Shellie]

@Trouble
Removing the driver is the first thing I tried (before I realised that XPS and PDF drivers do not work either. It made no difference. I have not hacked it out of the registry but, remember XPS and PDF have the same problem.

Booting into Safe mode does not help, as there is no printing in Safe mode.

I've run Windows Setup from the CD before. No difference. This is what makes me think that the only option will be to format the SSD and reinstall - unless someone can tell me what the real problem is. I have not done that yet. I started once, but Win10 told me it cannot do a clean install unless the disk has a GPT partition (currently it's MBR). I know I can fix that, but it begs the question: how did Win10 get on this new PC in the first place?

@Norton Yes, the printer worked fine in Win7 - as did XPS and PDF drivers. I avoided Win8, but felt that Win10 was worth a try. Maybe Win10 senses that I do not like it. I wish I had bought Win7 with this PC, to upgrade after M$ clean up the mess that is Win10 (Win12, perhaps?)

Try booting to safe mode with drivers. That will allow printing

 

[hdhondt]

Try booting to safe mode with drivers. That will allow printing

Why should I? If you read my last post you'll see I think I found the solution: disable Win10's automatic printer install, clean up the whole PC and reinstall the manufacturer's driver.

And it's still working,

 

[Shellie]

Why should I? If you read my last post you'll see I think I found the solution: disable Win10's automatic printer install, clean up the whole PC and reinstall the manufacturer's driver.

And it's still working,

sorry my mistake

 

[Joan Saez]

I have had this problem for a while, and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that only a complete reformat/reinstall will help.

Here's the problem: Windows 10 Home is unable to use any printer driver. If I try to print a test page, I get the message "The test page failed to print". If I print from any application, no error messages appear, but no output is produce. I have the following drivers installed:

Fax
Microsoft print to PDF
Microsoft XPS document wiriter
Fuji Xerox Docuprint CM305DF

All of them have the same problem. Drivers like PDF or XPS ask for a file name, but then no file is created.

I have tried running SFC /SCANNOW, CHKDSK, and hard disk test utilities. I have reinstalled Windows 10 from CD (keeping programs and data). All this has not made any difference. Windows 10 is fully up-to-date. I have heaps of space on both the boot disk (SSD) and the main data disk (1TB). Here are some of the details of the system:

Version 10.0.10586 Build 10586
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz, 3700 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0311, 31/08/2015
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Boot Disk Size 111.30 GB (119,507,251,200 bytes), free space 79GB
Data Disk Size 931.51 GB (1,000,202,039,296 bytes), free space 862GB

The system is only about 3 months old, and initially it worked flawlessly. I have ZoneAlarm and MalwareBytes installed. Both are fully up-to-date.

I should add that, occasionally, a print does succeed, but the very next attempt will fail again.

What can I do to get printing, without reformatting my hard disk?

 

[Joan Saez]

SOLVED
I had the issue after WINDOWS 10 did an update. Here is what i did:

Windows START
cmd.exe - right click to execute as Administrator before hitting ENTER

type

cd\Windows\System32\spool

enter

type

cacls.exe PRINTERS /E /G administrator:C


Reboot


Should work. If issues persist, you may want to also execute the above, substitute your user name for "administrator" in this line:


cacls.exe....


WE CAN PRINT AGAIN!!!!!

 

[hdhondt]

cacls was phased out years ago, and replaced with icacls.

I have not tried either as I have not had the problem since I implemented the fix I mentioned in comment #12, i.e. disable Windows' automatic printer installation. I will try it if the problem happens again.