273243 - Can't print to a network printer.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Al Vitale]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I installed Firefox 1.0 last week.  There are two printers on my home network. 
One printer is directly connected to one of the PCs and works fine.  The other
printer (HP LaserJet 5) is connected to a Dlink Dl704P-B1 router.  Once Firefox
installed that printer began misbehaving.  Now when I try to print a document,
from either PC, the first page contains what appears to be printer commands,
then the document prints.  Unfortunalely, when printed the document is missing
text, characters are over-printed and sometimes, depending on the document,
strange characters are included.  If the same document is printed on the
directly connected printer (HP LaserJet 6100 all-in-one) it is fine.  I
disconnected the LaserJet 5 printer from the network and connected it directly
to a PC then it printed the document correctly.  Also, I downloaded and
installed all new printer drivers but that did not help.  Lastly, I download and
installed the current software versions for the DLink router but that did not
help.  I used Microsoft's "Add / Remove" software to remove Firefox from one of
the PCs but that did not help.  Also I noticed Firefox does not come with an
uninstall feature to remove / reset Registry changes.  My suspicion is that
Firefox changed a setting in the Registry not expecting to come in contact with
a faily old HP LaserJet 5 printer.  In the grand scheme of thisgs this problem
is probably consided "Normal" however, because of the way these printers are
used to run a business, not having that other printer has a major impact and is
causing considerable costs to the business.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Word
2.Select a document to print.
3.Insure "Print Set-Up" is correct
4.Print the document.

Also:
1.Start Menu
2.Select Settings
3.Select Printers and Faxes
4.Right Click on the LaserJet 5 Icon
5.Select Properties
6.Select "Print Test Page"

Actual Results:  
The first page prints what appears to be printer commands:
"AGEPROTECT=AUTO"
"@PJL SET RET=MEDIUM"
"@PJL SET ECONOMODE=OFF"
"@PJL SET RESOLUTION=600"
Then the document or test page prints with missing text/characters, over-printed
characters or starnge characters (ASCII characters).

Expected Results:  
Printed the document as it had before Firefox was installed.

Themes are not used.  Both PCs run Windows XP with Service Pack 2.  The newtwork
is a standard Windows network, The network name is GREEK_GODS and the PCs are
named ZEUS and ATHENA.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Firefox does only change/modify such regisrty settings :
1. It creates a FF entry with the current path to Firefox and it's Version 
(reason: Plugin installers like Java need those informations to find Firefox on
the HDD)
2. It registers itself as browser and it change the default browser setting
after the User agreed. 
3. A few File associations are changed to FF (*.html...)

That is all, Firefox doesn't install or change system Files in the Windows
directory and it also doesn't mpdify other registry keys. The Firefox settings
are stored in the firefox directory and not in the registry.

There muste be something else that caused this because I think it's impossible
that a firefox installation could affect printers on a Win32 System.

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

Reporter, did you rename the network printer ? If so, this is a dupe of bug 270812.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.