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slcdane

1 Message

40175

June 30th, 2007 22:00

966 printer won't print

I installed the 966 wirelessly about three weeks ago, and it worked like a charm on all the computers.  No problem.  Then about 4-5 days ago it stopped printing.  It is still connected to the network.  I can ping its IP address.  But when it goes to print it starts out in the pop-up window and then just hangs, anywhere from 5% to 99% complete.  It never completes the action.  Sometimes the document will show up under printers as printing, and other times it never gets that far.  It acts like a buffer may be full, but can't see anywhere to purge it.  It acts the same on all the computers  There are no erros generated, it just doesn't begin printing.  One more thing, it apears that this may have happened after I sent my first FAX.

Traillens

4 Posts

January 8th, 2008 15:00

Think Epson.
Gave my hubby my old Epson for his ofc when I got the Dell 966. After 10 years it still works better than the new 966. I think Dell sells Epson too. Maybe they could do an exchange?
Never thought to check the ppm vs what was promised. You raised an excellent point. I honestly believe, Dell was overwhelmed with orders and quality check was left out of the equation in an effort to meet demands of shareholders. That was expressed by a Dell employee.
I will say the XPS410 PC works beautifully, as does the 24" widescreen monitor. The 966 AIO ? Not.

ObscureJ

4 Posts

January 8th, 2008 16:00

I don't understand how you can have been told you only had 21 days to exchange, similarly an earlier post in this thread who seemed to say they'd been told 30 days. My documentation from Dell says the printer comes with 1-year warranty. In other words if it doesn't work within the year they will repair or replace it . Any replacement during that time must start a new 1-year period; they can't say otherwise as that becomes a 'new' machine.
 
If my experience and that of the rest of the posters here is anything to go by, this printer is "not fit for purpose" and under the trades description act it must therefore be replaced or the full cost of purchase refunded. I will have no hesitation in contacting the Trading Standards department if Dell don't honour this. And of course there's Watchdog...
 
The very fact that Dell have discontinued the printer and replaced it with a new version indicates they know it to be inherently faulty. I suppose someone who has a 966 with wireless adapter that works is unlikely to come into one of these forums, but I have considerable doubts that a such a person exists.


Message Edited by ObscureJ on 01-08-2008 06:12 PM

Traillens

4 Posts

January 8th, 2008 17:00

you are absolutely right. And yes, their support people bend over backwards to be helpful. Trick is to find one who has the authority to replace a defaulty unit. Perhaps you have to use the same "trouble code" to il;lustrate continuing efforts to repair, then maybe it gets bumped up to a supervisor.
I'm not concerned about them making a new model and stopping the 966. That is routine practice in technology. You know, out of date before it leaves the warehouse.

PudgyOne

9 Legend

 • 

30.3K Posts

January 8th, 2008 21:00

cfsolar

1 Message

February 4th, 2008 02:00

Is there a solution to this yet?  I have had nothing but headaches with the 966.  I have my 966 set up for wireless use in my house and its about 3 feet from the wireless router. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers from CDs numerous times.  And still, every time I hit print, I hold my breath...will it print? will it give me a communication error?  or will it appear to start to print and hang at the 5% level.  And heaven forbid it should ever go into sleep mode, because it won't wake up just by sending a print job.  I have to walk over to the printer, power it down, then turn it back on again.   I can understand going into sleep mode for energy reasons, but this printer goes into deep hibernation!!

I've upgraded all of the firmware in my routers so that doesn't appear to be the issues.  If anyone has a solution, I'd love to hear it!

o0timbo0o

1 Message

February 4th, 2008 07:00

HI ,

 

I checked the dell site the other day to find nothing but the old drivers still lurking.

 

I have  2 XP & 1 Vista machines and have the problem on each and every one of them. The printer service crashes after 10 -15 mins from fresh reboot and 100% does not work after resume from hibernate or standby.

 

to save me the hassle of rebooting to print every time i simply go to "control Panel " > "Administrative Tools" "Services"  , find the and restart the "dlcq_device". The interesting thing is that when you manually stop it the service crashes ( effectively won't stop) . Press restart again and it will kick into life and the printer will work again.

 

This is only a silly little work around that i have discovered.

 

Interestingly enough people have been posting on here for ages and noone from dell has responded making me feel that we are on our own here .. the 966 is actually a Lexmark that dell took over and have written there own drivers for.

 

As Dell isn't listening to us on this particular issue the only way that these people will sit up and listen is when you send your unit back as faulty. You were given a 1 yr warranty with this machine. You may have to go through the motions by sending the unit back and have the same model as a replacement  , but if you do this enough times they will have to offer an alternative as it is must fall under some trades description.

 

I have had my printer for 4 months and it has not worked as it should have from day one. So i for one have had enough with

A) having to reboot my PC or restart the service to print anything

B) the 100% total lack of Dell support

 

 

p.s is Dell is listening or reading ( and i know you do).. how about some response from you on this ??

ObscureJ

4 Posts

February 4th, 2008 10:00

Well guys I'm sorry to say this one looks like it's going to run and run (er, or not, depending on your perspective).

 

I have been battling with the Dell Technical bods in India for many weeks, sometimes several e-mails daily, to try and get this resolved. I flatly refused a replacement 966, on the grounds that, going by this forum, it stands no better chance of working. I asked for a straight return and refund, but they refused, so I asked for a 968w, as they appear from the sales blurb to be selling this with the wireless adapter already installed, and the design and placement of it is totally different (one would hope this was done to alleviate the problems and that they might have succeeded in doing so). After being promised it two weeks ago, when (after a week) I received an e-mail with the order confirmation, they were sending a non-wireless 968. Two weeks on and that is still all I have, despite repeated promises that the wireless adapter would be sent separately (which I at first refused demanding the printer with the card installed, but they beat me down on this one...). As far as I am aware no wireless adapter has even yet been despatched.

 

So, is the 968 any better? Well thankfully I was not expecting great things, and so I wasn't disappointed. It would seem from my experience just via the USB (remember Dell haven't shipped me the new wireless card for the 968 despite promising they would/had, and are now actually saying to me, "Try it via the USB and make sure it works first...") that it's just as much a piece of junk as the 966.

 

The 968 connected to a laptop running XP will deliver one single print, then communication is lost. And this is via USB remember! Restart the laptop and again it will deliver one single print, then up comes the "no communication" message. On a laptop running Vista it does work, but is even slower than the 966! One and a half minutes for an A4 colour photo (admittedly the most you would expect to ask of it) which the 966 - when it deigns to work - will deliver via USB in just under a minute (five minutes wirelessly, if you're lucky).

 

Dell clearly know the 966 was no good. They perhaps think they've solved the problem with the redesigned wireless adapter on the 968. But as far as I can tell without taking the wireless side into consideration, the 968 is as bad, if not worse, than the 966 on print speed and tempremental working.

 

I ordered the 966 based on two things: high print speeds (they quoted something like up to 27ppm colour) and wireless capability, and for these two things I was prepared to pay the top price of over £200. What I have is a printer that would be knocked into a cocked hat by one costing a quarter of that.

 

Dell should put their hand up and accept they have produced a machine that is "not fit for purpose" and offer a full refund to everyone who requests it. I fully intend to pursue this through the small claims court if necessary.

verwimp

3 Posts

February 4th, 2008 21:00

Dell has got my 966 printer working wirelessly but the scanner has to be plugged in with the USB.  So far so good and all has been well for 2 whole weeks now.  I still have to pause my Kaspersky antivirus in order to use my printer however, this is because there is a conflict with Kaspersky.  Better than nothing I guess.

Splitshot638

2 Posts

February 5th, 2008 12:00

ObscureJ ,

Well here's what I did ,,,, I battled for eight months and finally told customer service that I wanted a Non- Dell printer they finally agrred and I got the Cannon MP 970 plugged it in and not a problem yet ..... The 966 is absolute junk .......

bpmeg

1 Message

October 1st, 2008 13:00

I get the same 5% issue on this 966.  It's like rolling the dice for lucky 7.  I've called tech support at least 4 times.  All of them just reinstall my drivers, or stop & restart the Dell Printer Services.  Then they claim it's fixed.  It is an inconvenience to call tech support on this now.  The two easiest steps to do are 1. restart the dell printer services. 2. reset, or power off/on the printer.  This is old news, but it still works.  I don't think Dell, HP, or IBM have really fixed this wireless issue.  They all have problems with this.  They all just want to remove the printer drivers, & reinstall the drivers.  After you hang up with tech support, the same issue can happen the next minute, hour, or day.  Also, don't buy into the tech support offering their phone extension to "personalize" the tech support call for assistance later with the same issue.  I followed this three times.  Each time the tech support person never returned my call.  I just had to open another service call on this. I have XP, the latest FW on the wireless card.  One more thing, I was told because my warranty had expired after one year, this was the best they can do (reinstalling the drivers).  I hardly use this printer to begin with.  So it is still new to me!

PudgyOne

9 Legend

 • 

30.3K Posts

August 29th, 2012 23:00

WJ Lob,

 

Try system restore to before this happened?

 

What virus program are you using?

 

Is the printer using the wireless adapter or usb connection?

 

Have you scanned for Malware? Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware update it and do a quick scan. Remove anything it finds. Post back the log if it finds anything.

 

 

Rick

WJ Lob

1 Message

August 29th, 2012 23:00

I just started my problem yesterday. only use the USB cable but the problem is a lot like the problem all you are having.I ran microsoft "Speedy pro".

My  966 started printing,just headers,hanging up part way through print jobs,and when you press the print button on the print screen the print screen vanishes and nothing happened.The next time I printed it worked fine. Tonight when I printed your coments it hung up for about 3 or 4 minutes and started printing again and finished the job.Before yesterday it never gave me a minutes trouble, now it is acting kind of weird.

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