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Dell 3100cn slow BW printing over network
I've had this printer for about 3 years now and it's been working great for the most part. Last week I had to replace my router which the printer was connected to, and in the process the static IP had to change to conform to the new routers subnet. That went fine however now my BW pages are coming out very slow. It sounds as if it is running a color print, and I can hear it switch over the toner 3 times before the page comes out. I have spend a few hours during the past week troubleshooting: messing with settings, resetting, trying RAW vs LPD, updating drivers (i'm on vista). No luck. Please tell me how a simple router switch-out could have such an impact?. I print large quanitites of BW at least once a week, and need this thing back it's normal 25ppm.
llynster
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April 20th, 2009 10:00
You're right..... changing the router should NOT have caused this.
If you look at one of your "black" pages with a magnifying glass or loupe, can you see color pixels. From what you descibe, it does sound as if the machine is making composite black.
One thing I picked up on..... "Updating drivers". For the printer? Or other driivers?
The drivers are just about the only thing that will cause this. Do you have any other PC's on your network that are NOT Vista and DO NOT perform this way?
xDman23
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April 20th, 2009 11:00
You're right I didn't look at the page on a pixel level, just the naked eye. But the source document (text) does not have any color, so I don't see how any color would make it on to the page unless the printer is just randomly decing which color to use. On top of that I made sure the printer default are set to "B&W" both on the PC printer profile settings and on the Printer it self.
Is there a master reset for the printer to bring it to default factory settings... I have not tried this and perhaps all my tinkering with it, may have put something out of whack... but that's just me grasping at straws.
Edit: Also printing pages with lots of color... produces a BW page, if there was color to be seen I would have seen it here.
xDman23
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April 20th, 2009 11:00
Thanks for your suggestions.
I'm *not* seeing any color on the page what so ever. The drivers I've updated were for the printer, however now that I think about it, I have since deleted/re-installed the printer several times, and can't be 100% confident that the latest driver is being used once it's re-installed (though imagine it *should*). I will double check this once I get home today.
Great idea to test with other Machines (why didn't I think of that); I do have other PC's on the network that are not Vista (OS X and XP) ; I'm guessing if the other machines on the network behave the same it's a printer problem, otherwise it's a machine specific problem and should be resolved by drivers update. I haven't installed/tested the printer on the other mchines yet, but will do tonight and report the results.
Thx.
llynster
1.7K Posts
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April 20th, 2009 11:00
To Quote: "I'm *not* seeing any color on the page what so ever"
Not to question that...... but did you use something powerful enough to actually see the printing at the Pixel level? To make perfect composite black, all three color pixels have to be perfectly superimposed. But due to mechanical variations in the printer, they're not, and should be seen when magnified sufficiently.
I can't think of any reason the printer should be going thru those gyrations. OBTW..... if just one dot on the page is color. For instance, a "color" period at the end of a single sentence will also cause a "color delay slowdown"
xDman23
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May 17th, 2009 11:00
Just an update: I figured it out... completley by accident but thought I'd post my finding if anyone else runs into this.
The problem was that the printer was using an older driver even though a newer one was installed and available. In the printer properties, under Advanced tab, there is a drop-down selection of drivers associated with the printer, after looking at the details of each I selected the one with the latest date and wallah. To be safe I deleted the old ones so this kind of think never happens again. For some reason I thought that windows would automatically select the latest driver when you run the installer of the latest drivers, which I've done several times in my attempts to get this working properly.
:emotion-2: