A960 printer problem(s)

Question

Two months with my new Vista PC - and I still can't print w/ my A960. I was all excited when I saw the new drivers posted - I should have known better.   Installed the drivers - first issue was the printer would always go off-line when I attempted to print something. I found a posting suggesting it might help to unselect 'Enable bidirectional support' on the Printer->Ports properties page. I unselected this - and guess what, I was able to print - you can't imagine my excitement.   Unfortunately, my excitement was short lived - as I tired to print again - and no luck. Apparently the spooler/driver is unable to delete the document from the print monitor after it is printed - what I see now when I open the print monitor for my A960 - is the document sitting in the list with a status of 'Deleting - Printing - Printed' - it never goes away (unless I reboot).   Any ideas/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

amnesia1 · Answer

I feel your pain. I have spent untold hours trying to make my 960 work. I unselected the 'Enable bidirectional support' and it still didn't work. I am about ready to go to Walmart and buy me a $40 printer and be done with it.   Thanks for posting. At least I know I didn't do anything wrong. Maybe they'll fix it soon.   Thanks again.

kfar1755 · Answer

I have the A940 (previously on my Windows-XP)--now on Windows Vista.  After 6 days of having numerous Dell Techs try everything they could, I finally reached the right Tech--and got my printer working!!  I don't know anything about computers, so I went on Dell Connect and had him control my computer remotely.  I just followed his instructions when to connect/disconnect the USB cables, etc.  First, he restored the OS (starting now with a 'clean' OS).  Second, he downloaded/installed the 10 updates.  Third, he downloaded/installed the printer driver (I also needed a Fax application and firmware.).  Lastly, he connected the printer.  The only trouble I'm still having is with faxing.

NothinButHeadac · Answer

What a pain this has been!  I went online to talk with someone about my issues as well (same as all of you.)  Because my printer wasn't under warranty anymore I had a heck of a time getting someone to help me.  Finally I got someone to help via online chat and also let him use my computer remotely (I might add he was a windows desktop tech, not a printer tech, since printer techs wouldnt help since I was out of warranty).  He never restored my pc and after about 2 hours of him (or her) taking over, they said my printer was faulty!  WHAT!?  It worked perfectly fine about 3 weeks ago hooked up to my old computer.  After reading the forums over and over I finally did a restore on my computer, twice.  Also having problems with that as well, and getting in trouble by the cyberpolice, lol (that is a long story that has nothing to do with my printer) I think I am finally up and running.  All I have done so far is print a test page but that is 100% better than before.  So, to anyone having trouble, I would say maybe do a restore, pick a date as close to the beginning of when you got you computer.  I went back to about a week and a half after I got it.  I had unplugged my printer, went to dell's site and downloaded the driver.  I followed all instructions, when it said to plug in the printer I did and turned it on.  When the install new hardware popped up i cancelled/closed it right away.  When it was finished I clicked on 'print test page', and to my surprise it actually did what it was supposed to.  Also, I never downloaded the firmware, not sure if I need to or not, but hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.   Also, on Vista it didn't delete any files on my computer doing the restore.   One thing I can't figure out is that the reason that we need to do a restore, from what I understand, is to remove all previous downloaded apps and drivers from the installation cd.  Well, the point I restored from didn't let me go back that far because I obviously tried to install my printer on day 1.  I still can't figure out what worked and why, but I am thankful.  I also deleted some files from system32 under printers, but I noticed that after it was reinstalled and working, there are still no files in there so I am not sure that I needed to do that anyways.  Hopefully I won't run into problems later because of it.    Well, I feel everyone's pain.  I just hope that there is something in my post that can help.   Janna

Lutheran · Answer

I am having the same exact issues as the OP , what did you do to fix the problem? I got it to print 1 test page then exactly what happened to you happened to me.

Lutheran · Answer

I have XP media center as the OS I originaly got with my XPS. I went out myself and bought Vista Premium and installed it on a seperate partition. I went into device manager and uninstalled the printer from there and then cleared out that spool folder that was mentioned and then uninstalled the software and turned off my printer and pulled out the usb cable. I then rebooted and unplugged the internet cable. I then restarted the vista install for the printer and put the usb cable and the power back on when asked..when it was done i was able to print a test page but of course the page would not clear out so when i tried to print again it wouldnt work. I assume i can scroll all the way back to original using the vista dvd but how do it do it without reinstalling the os again? And will that work? Isn't it ridiculous that the new driver wasn't made to anticipate this happening? I feel like throwing this A960 in the garbage pail.

Gina Q · Answer

Here's a solution for this.   Removing XP drivers and LEXBCE from Vista (for the 720, A920, 922, A940, 942, A960, 962, 964 and 966 printers)

Printers

A960 printer problem(s)

Was this post helpful?