MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

[MitchD]

I have a MPc3500 that all of a sudden once a week or so will print every print job out in "gibberish". If the customer resets the machine, turns off and on at main power switch, it will work fine for a week or so.

It almost looks like a print out if the wrong driver is used. I have verified the driver and its the correct one for Win7 64bit. Copying is unaffected during the printing issues.

Could it be a bad memory dimm? Anyone else seen this problem?

Thanks

[Herrmann]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

please scan an example an post it here, so we can see it

[MitchD]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

I will get one scanned in tomorrow

[SargeNZ]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

No ones slipping in at lunch with their macbook or Iphone and trying to do some printing? You will be able to tell if a postscript job was sent to the machine from the headers in the first page of gibberish.

[mmru4real]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

No ones slipping in at lunch with their macbook or Iphone and trying to do some printing? You will be able to tell if a postscript job was sent to the machine from the headers in the first page of gibberish.

I concur didn't these have to have ps3 enabled and when they didn't they print gibberish

[Iowatech]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

I'm going to guess that the "gibberish" you speak of is a few random ASCII characters on a sheet of paper that is repeated a lot (at least that's what we call it). If that isn't the case, you probably should stop reading, and feel free to make fun of me as well (it's the rule: never assume: you'll make an ...).

Anyway, sounds like there is probably a problem with the power utility or something that causes an outage or a spike or something to the printer while the print job is being transmitted from the computer. If that problem is short enough, the printer won't even shut down, but it will loose all the font data and formatting instructions that were sent at the beginning of the print job. Without that frame of reference, the machine will start printing random nonsense. Actually, pretty much any printer that I've ever seen will do that.

If you haven't upgraded the firmware, you might try that, but I haven't seen a firmware problem cause this in years. But that still is pretty easy, and it is a good thing to do from time to time if you can.

Finally, another thing that might help that is pretty easy is upgrading the print drivers. Or changing them. I've seen the PCL 5 or 6 drivers work better than the universal PCL driver in some cases, and if there is an RPCS driver available, that usually works the best.

Hope that helps.

[nmfaxman]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Is someone trying to print from their smart/dumb phone?

I tried in once in my demo floor and it tended to lock up each machine after printing 2 pages of BS.
It installed a universal driver that looked like HP PS options.
It seemed to want PS installed, but only printed 2 pages instead of 200 like a PS driver would and then they locked up.
Latest and greatest frimware. (Thanks Zaza)

Check their wireless security and log.

If they require it, then I would charge for the PS chip and share a win 7 driver with 32 and 64 bit drivers.

Just what I have seen.

[Stewart Norris]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Sounds like it is printing bit map data. I would give each type of driver a chance and make sure your customer does'nt just have a liking to see you . Then try swapping the print controller. Some drivers have a bit map setting , but who uses that ?

[Bantams]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Someones printing PDF pages from the web or something like that.

[MitchD]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Here is a copy of the problem. It was printed on their letterhead which explains the correct print at the top.

[mrwho]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

I'd put my bet on someone trying to print from a "rogue" computer with the wrong drivers. If you don't have many computers printing, try to temporarily enable pin code authentication (one code is enough) for printing only and configure said pin code on the authorized computers. You should be able to see any possible "unauthorized" (meaning not configured with pin-code) prints on the error log.

[zames77]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

How does it look within a print preview window?

[ruben]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Try printing the file as an image. Most likely the program they saved the file with did not create a correct PDF, or they used a converter.

You could also try using Foxit Reader instead of Acrobat.

[MitchD]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

How does it look within a print preview window?

Looks normal. I just confirmed with the onsite IT tech, Only 3 people are printing to this machine and they are running Win 7 64 PCL5 drivers. I suggested to him to change to the PCL6 since it is only 3 PC's. He will get on that first thing in the morning and report back. I just traded in a MPc3500 today so I now have a donor machine for Dimm's, ect....... I also confirmed that firmware is all up to date.

The Ricoh forum suggested a NVRAM clear. I love how their answer for every question I have either by phone or forum is NVRAM clear.

[mrwho]

Re: MPc3500 Prints Gibberish

Looks normal. I just confirmed with the onsite IT tech, Only 3 people are printing to this machine and they are running Win 7 64 PCL5 drivers. I suggested to him to change to the PCL6 since it is only 3 PC's. He will get on that first thing in the morning and report back. I just traded in a MPc3500 today so I now have a donor machine for Dimm's, ect....... I also confirmed that firmware is all up to date.

The Ricoh forum suggested a NVRAM clear. I love how their answer for every question I have either by phone or forum is NVRAM clear.

I solved some odd problems that way, but I save it for last - for every problem I solved using RAM clear I had three or four where I tried it and didn't do anything.