Communication problem with Dell 944

I've only recently experienced this problem and the printer just won't print anything - it asks me to unplug and re-boot and what have you, but there is no problem with the cables. I can scan from the printer to my PC so it's communicating to some respect. I uninstalled the existing drivers and downloaded and re-installed from the Dell web page, but still encounter this message. Anybody any ideas? They will gratefully be accepted. Thanks in advance, Declan.

Hey Declan, Sorry to hear you're having problems. Can you give us some more specifics about your printer? i.e Make and Model. Have you tried seeing if there is a large amount of documents queued for printing? Just go to the control panel and click on "Printers and Faxes". Find your print, right click and it should say something like "See what's printing". Click on that and you should see what's queued up. If it's full of print requests, just try deleting them. It is also possible that you tried printing a particularly large file, which could be causing the problems. Cheers, Nahumi

Hi Nahumi, Thanks for responding. The printer is a Dell Photo AIO (All-in-one (photo-copier, fax, scanner, printer)) 944 and the print queue is empty. I hope this helps. Declan.

Are you using Vista? If so, have you tried installing this patch?

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/…p;fileid=224494

XP …

Hi Nahumi, As I've said already I have uninstalled the software and downloaded and re-installed from the Dell web site. Nothing seems to work to resolve this issue - are you finished? Should I re-post and change the title? Any more help would be appreciated, this is way beyond my technical know-how. Declan,

Sorry for the late reply Declan,

There are only a couple more suggestions that I can think of, but I'm not entirely sure whether they will work. In any case, I'll make sure someone else from the Tech team heads over to this topic to see if they can help you a bit more.

Firstly, although I know you've installed the correct drivers from the Dell website a few times, it might be worth trying to get Windows to automatically install the drivers. Microsoft usually has access to slightly older drivers, but they usually tend to work. Simply uninstall the printer drivers, unplug the printer and reboot. Once your machine is up and running plug the printer in again and the "Safely Add/Remove Hardware" window should pop up. You should be given the option for Windows to download the drivers directly.

Secondly, you could try looking at the Device Manager. Open your Start Menu and click on Run. Type in "devmgmt.msc" and hit enter. This should open up the Device Manager. Try finding your printer on the list. If it has a yellow exclamation mark next to your printer, right click it and click on properties. There should be an error code, please note that down and let me know what it is.

Thirdly, you could try doing a System Restore to before your printer stopped working. Just follow these instructions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084

I hope that helps. I'll ask one of the Tech guys to have a look at this topic for you in any case.
Nahumi