MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

[copyaction]

OK so this is a new one on me. Customer says he came back after lunch and copier had printed a stack of these blank pages with "1/4 smily face" as pictured on each page.
So is he nuts, am I nuts or is the machine possessed?

[Iowatech]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

OK so this is a new one on me. Customer says he came back after lunch and copier had printed a stack of these blank pages with "1/4 smily face" as pictured on each page.
So is he nuts, am I nuts or is the machine possessed?

Probably not either. That's more likely an incompatible print job or an outdated print driver. Or (and this is probably outrageously unlikely as it goes back to the dot matrix days), there might have been a power transient that caused the machine to shut off for a little while and now it is printing an ASCII representation of the data it receives. Those are ASCII symbols after all. Including the blank area.

[KenB]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

Could also be a PostScript dump, where a PosrScript job was sent to a machine without PostScript.

Most machines stopped doing this some years back, where the job would simply be rejected, but just when that kicked in or with which model I don't know.

Even if if this model does the rejection, I think it can still happen under the right conditions.

If he can find the first page of the dump, and it starts with something like "AdobePS!", that is normally a dead giveaway.

[KenB]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

Could also be a PostScript dump, where a PostScript job was sent to a machine without PostScript.

Most machines stopped doing this some years back, where the job would simply be rejected, but just when that kicked in or with which model I don't know.

Even if if this model does the rejection, I think it can still happen under the right conditions.

If he can find the first page of the dump, and it starts with something like "AdobePS!", that is normally a dead giveaway.

Or maybe the machine is only 1/4 happy?

[slimslob]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

I will go with the PostScript driver also. PCL print engine tries to interpret the PS commands as printable characters. The result is that the top of the first page, which is the job description, is actually text and is printed as such. The rest is printed as a couple of random text and graphic characters on the top line of each page.

If the 2851 is supposed to have PS3 installed, the SD card might have gone bad or gotten scrambled by a power surge,in which case sometimes full power down and reboot will correct it.

[copier tech]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

Also check the machine is not installed on a WSD post & not using the Ricoh class driver this cause a load of issues.

[mrwho]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

If it's still doing it could be some leftover corrupted print job on a computer. Turn off the machine, reboot all the computers that print to it and then turn on the machine. That should purge any leftover print data still being sent.

[copyaction]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

Also check the machine is not installed on a WSD post & not using the Ricoh class driver this cause a load of issues.

I believe it did self install the Ricoh class driver.
I will try it with 2851 driver

I should add it is the 2nd time he says it has done it, the first was about 3 weeks ago and I figured it could be a weird print job that it couldn't interpret so I had him restart the computers and make sure the print queues were cleared.
So this time I had him send a picture of one of the pages.
I will check if it has the postscript card and install the proper driver.

[bsm2]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

i believe it did self install the ricoh class driver.
I will try it with 2851 driver

i should add it is the 2nd time he says it has done it, the first was about 3 weeks ago and i figured it could be a weird print job that it couldn't interpret so i had him restart the computers and make sure the print queues were cleared.
So this time i had him send a picture of one of the pages.
I will check if it has the postscript card and install the proper driver.

windows ricoh class driver is the wrong driver.

Do not let windows 8 or 10 install the class driver
you must install and configure the mfg driver

[NeoMatrix]

Re: MP2851 customer claims printing blank sheets with 1/4 and smily face in corner.

Windows operating systems.
How to clear the PC print spool directory from any corrupt print files.


<run> cmd.exe

cd\ C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

del *.*


HTH