Printing garbage from Fuji Xerox printer

[Wen Le]

Dear,

I encountered a recurring problem of garbage printing from the printers in the office. They played up by printing a nonsense of symbols unendingly from Lotus Notes application. The staff usually think that the problem of nonstop printing is caused by the printer but in fact, it could be due to the sender's encrypted document. The receivers are unaware of this encryption as they are not informed by the sender.

What is the advice to stop garbage printing? Can the problem be resolved at the printer level?

Thank you.

[Iowatech]

Re: Printing garbage from Fuji Xerox printer

I am pretty new to Xerox, but I think I may have seen something like that on machines I have some experience with once or twice. If I remember correctly, it was an anomaly in the local power utility's output, like a surge or a spike. You might check that, it shouldn't take too long. If when the machine is rebooted the problem goes away, that's something that I'd check anyway.

[Wen Le]

Re: Printing garbage from Fuji Xerox printer

I am pretty new to Xerox, but I think I may have seen something like that on machines I have some experience with once or twice. If I remember correctly, it was an anomaly in the local power utility's output, like a surge or a spike. You might check that, it shouldn't take too long. If when the machine is rebooted the problem goes away, that's something that I'd check anyway.

For all I know, it is not related to the printer as others could print out their documents. It is caused by the activated encryption option in the sender's Lotus Notes security feature. Anyone could also enable the encryption option in Microsoft Word or Excel application with a password. The receiver either has to ask for the decryption key or to get the sender to disable the encryption option in the Lotus Notes before he or she sends an email.

If you have any information on this topic, please share.

[Milo Wilson]

Re: Printing garbage from Fuji Xerox printer

What kind of driver are you using? What printer is it?

[blackcat4866]

Re: Printing garbage from Fuji Xerox printer

This is commonly called a PostScript error, but does not necessarily mean that you're using PostScript print emulation. Let me explain.

When a printer gets data that it cannot identify, it prints it exactly like it is received: one line of code per page. There are three possible reasons.
1) The printer is set to receive PostScript and receives Printer Control Language. Or the printer is set to receive Printer Control Language and receives PostScript data.
2) The wrong print driver is being used.
3) Non-print data is arriving at the printer.

I've seen all three situations.
1) Most of the printers and MFPs I see can print in either print emulation. There are usually soft switches on the machine to select print emulation: A) Automatic, B) PS, C) PCL. The drivers can be handled differently. Some manufacturers have selection of print emulation in the driver. Some manufacturers write a separate driver for PS and PCL. Some manufacturers like Sharp and Konica Minolta will print in PCL print emulation without optional equipment, but requires an accessory to print in PS. In most cases the choice of print emulation is not crucial as long as the same choice is made in both the printer and the driver. There's a much larger conversation here about the benefits of specific print emulations (PS2, PS3, PCL5e, PCL5c, PCLXL), and I'm not going to get into that right now. Just make sure that the settings match.
2) A Toshiba or Lexmark print driver may not get properly understood by a Xerox printer. The hard part is finding the PC that has the wrong driver, especially on a large network.
3) Again on a larger network, non-print data may arrive at the printer. It can be very difficult to determine exactly where the non-print data originates. The simple solution is to change the printers IP address to an open address, then change the port setting in each driver.

=^..^=