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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix System
I am impelled to share this little story just in case it helps someone else in my situation. About a year ago I bought an HP 7140xi multifunction printer / scanner / fax / copier to use in a small office with a PowerBook and an iBook running an AirPort Extreme wireless setup. I was assured by the seller and HP that it would work fine "with OS X." What I found was that it would not work wirelessly, only through USB on one computer. Sure, I could "printer share," but invariably my computer was asleep when my wife wanted to print with her iBook. In addition to this limitation, only the printing would work reliably and even that word is not appropriate. It worked reliably for a while...

The printer would not be found, or if found, would not print, or would print but not eject the page (with MS Word). I couldn't check ink levels or other configuration choices supposedly available. I won't even go into the things that I couldn't do. I spent probably a hundred hours trying to solve this -- calling Apple, calling HP (who always kicked me into the Windows group no matter what I told the person that routed the calls). I reinstalled the HP printer software probably 20 times as this would usually fix the problem for a week or so. Apple techs told me (more than one) that wireless would not work with this unit -- period. HP said it should but had nothing to offer than what I was already doing. Or let's say all their advice came to naught. I was using the latest OS (10.3.3), the latest HP software, ran permissions repair and Disk Warrior a zillion times, fsck -- everything I could think of.

The final straw came when I hooked my wife's G4 iBook, running 10.3 to the unit by USB and no matter what I did it would not recognize the printer. It would with my PowerBook, but not her iBook. Go figure. At this point I was ready to junk the HP and start with something else, even though I had bought an extended contract for it.

About this time, I saw here in the hints about using GIMP software to run printers so I downloaded gimp-print-4.2.6-0.ppc and installed it on both computers. Added to the printer list in the Printer Setup, tried printing with both computers -- and I could, but the output was not good. Dark, not crisp.

Really gave up, made my HP driver software default again and on my wife's iBook, I removed the GIMP software. And, mirabile dictu, everything now works for both our laptops -- printing, scanning, wireless, etc. Has worked reliably now for a month. I can't believe it, but want to think it is solved. I assume that the GIMP software installed something missing in the OS X package, as I am now using the HP driver like I did before. Must have been something installed behind the scenes. Beyond me, but I want to share this story in case anyone else is struggling with one of these multi-function printers and to offer a possible solution to them.
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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix | 7 comments | Create New Account
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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: magir on May 17, '04 01:01:38PM

I also had quite a few problems with my HP Officejet G85 which is connected thru a JetDirect printserver.

Both under OS9 and OSX one hint quite often resolved any issues: HP uses a background application to communicate with the Printer - it is called HP Communications.app. As it is a background application it can only be quitted using the Activity Monitor or the Terminal. To resolve an issue, quit it and restart it - that helps! Besides that if you want to print using GIMPPrint you have to quit HP Communications to free up the communication channel to the printer. I usually leave the application quitted and only temporaily start it for scanning.



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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: schuehlieh on May 17, '04 03:21:09PM

dear magir
I am dealing with a different aio-problem, and I have to kill the hpcommunications-app sometimes in the activity monitor the way you wrote above . after shutting down my powerbook, the app restarts itself, and I haven't found a "starting object" until now, neither am I able to restart the app directly after having quitted. Could you please tell me, how you restart it manually?
sorry for my bad english.
thank you for your answer
julie



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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: magir on May 19, '04 08:11:19AM
It took me quite some time to find where HP Communication is autostarted :-). Problem is - I don't remember anymore. Luckily I've written everything down on my webpage.

Simply search for the file loginwindow.plist which contains a list of applications to autostart and remove the approriate entry.

Luckily I found your comment here - I guess a reminder email when comments are added would be a great feature for this forum...

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thank you!
Authored by: schuehlieh on May 19, '04 01:22:19PM

wow- I thank you very much! I'll try this tonite!
and your suggestion of a reminder email really would be a great new feature for this great site!



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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: mud on May 17, '04 05:39:26PM

You have had much better luck than I.

I have a dual-500 G4 with 1g of RAM, more than enough to run the HP software. I, too, suffered all the same problems you've described, spent about half the time you did, and eventually returned the POS for an Epson at half the price.

Rebooting the entire system was the only consistent work-around for the printer. Not a reasonable option for any printer, let alone a $450 model!

HP refused to acknolewdge that their drivers are horrible. They repeatedly insisted that corrupted permissions and preference files were at the root of the problem. Their e-mailed fixes were all the same: remove and reinstall the drivers, repair disk permissions.

After two weeks of back-and-forth e-mails with HP Support, reinstalling their drivers, repairing permissions and hard drives and no improvement, I packed it back up and returned it to Costco. (Luckily, Costco has an essentially no-questions-asked return policy.)

I ended up getting an Epson which, after some initial hick-ups, seems to be working much better for half the price.



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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: hp on May 18, '04 10:39:25AM

I've had a 7140xi for about a year now. It's hooked up to a router that's connected to an airport network. We have been able to use all of its functions except for high-res scanning from a cube, a collection of powerbooks, and a b&w powermac on OSX 1.2 and 1.3, some imacs on system 9 and a couple of Win XP things, both wired and wireless. The only problem we've had with the 7140 so far is the occasional cleaning of the printhead contacts you have to do. So far, we're *very* pleased with the thing.



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HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix
Authored by: tmk on Jul 28, '04 08:54:31AM

I thought I'd share my experience with our 7140xi

Our home network is setup as follows: the 7140xi is connected to a 100 Mb switch itself connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station. Both our PowerBooks (my wife's and mine) connect to our home network through AirPort cards.

One day for so unknown reason, I could no longer print to the 7140xi. Every time I tried to print the printer would basically output many pages but would only print some garbage on the top and bottom 1 cm of the pages.

I tried removing/re-installing the drivers several times but to no avail. I could still scan and make copies without problem which seems to indicate that the problem was between my PB and the printer (ie not the printer itself)

So I decided to finally install the 7140xi drivers on my wife's PB. Worth mentionning is the fact that we also have an officejet 5510. It's USB only and only used by my wife in another location.

The 5510 works beautifully with my Wife's PB either through a direct USB connection (which allows, for scanning, faxing and printing) or via Rendezvous when the 5510 is connected to the AirPort Extreme Base Station (printing only). Never had any problem.

Since everything seemed to be working correctly on my wife's PB, I was reluctant to install the 7140xi on her PB. Based on my own experience, HP software really gave me the impression of being of rather poor quality. I feared that having drivers for two different printers drivers on the same machine would only bring more problem.

BBut it turned out to be quite the opposite.

After installing the 7140 drivers in my wife's PowerBook, it kept working without any problem with both printers. Never having any problem re-connecting to any of the printers and printing even after switching network config.

One funny thing I noticed after installing the 7140 drivers on my wife's PowerBook (which already had the 5510 drivers) is that the version number for the 7140 as seen from the printer info (in the Printer Setup Utility) was higher (2.3.2) than for the same software installed on my PowerBook (2.2.9).

So I decided to install the 5510 drivers on my machine too.
But it didn't change anything. I still could not print and the printer info still showed the older version number (On My Machine the printer icon displayed on the Docsk was clearly a Windows based icon: ugly with a white background, whereas on my wife's PB it had a nicer icon that actually pictured our 7140 and with the correct transparent background )

Then I remembered that while searching through HP website for drivers for the 5510 (which we bought first) I noticed that there was a separate download which provided *only* printer drivers (ie not the other AIO modules for scanning, faxing, etc).

Print Only software/driver date: 2004-04-22 version: 1.0

And I had installed both these drivers and the 2003-12-30 dated 6.3.4 version of the AIO software for the 5510.

That specific software is not listed as a download option for the 7140.

So I thought I'd give it a try and also installed the 5510 "Print Only software/driver" and guess what? It did the trick!

My printer driver was updated to 2.3.2 (with the nice icon!) and my problems were gone. I've now been using this for more and one week without any problem.

The URL for the print only driver is:

<http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?product=311255&os=219&lang=en&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&softwareitem=oj-19842-1>

Now that everything works I can say that I really like this printer especially the double-sided printing (main reason why I got this printer)

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