Need the experts! Hang up with Epson 740 on XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Locke
  • Start date Start date
J

John Locke

Tried the famous coribright process (uninstall and re-
install drivers and software). For my system, same 740
works fine with old win98 laptop. For XP desktop, 740
prints text pages fine but goes nuts with a photo
printout request. Prints 10% of photo then spits out
rest of photo paper and will go forever with following
sheets and nonsense characters until reboot of desktop to
start over. Desktop can even drive via the LAN network
the 740 shared off of the old laptop. Any ideas from the
experts out there? Thanks.
 
Also, Cari, I have checked "never use interrupt" and I
have unchecked "enable plug and play"

John
 
Cari,

Gave it a valiant try but ended with same difficulty. To
review,

...changed BIOS to EPP
...checked plug and play
...disconnected printer
...removed all printer programs and deleted printers
...under server properties, removed all printers except
two (HP 4 and HP 5P). system said printers in use (don't
use and don't have these two printers....don't know how I
get this msg or how to delete these two printers)
...rebooted
...reconnected epson 740
...auto msg " printer found & installed"
...installed system monitor

results:

...system monitor works fine
...text prints fine
...photo no go. partial print then print job difficult to
delete and usually requires reboot/reset
...but, can put the old laptop with win98 on home LAN and
drive print a photo from the desktop software thru the
laptop to epson 740 printer. And, if I understand that
correctly, the desktop has to be using an XP driver to
drive the LAN 740 thru the laptop?

Many hours and multiple cycles of above with same
result. Any ideas or inputs would be appreciated as
always.

Photo quality still remains great with this nice "old"
epson printer and would love to solve this challenge.

John
 
No, you need to start the Add Printer Wizard BEFORE you connect the printer!

Unisntall and then reinstall it once more using:

http://www.coribright.com/windows/Article One.htm

You also might want to try the Windows 2000 driver from the Epson website
rather than the built in drivers from XP...and don't forget the Status
Monitor package.

So after the reboot, download the driver package from the Epson website.....
and install it ...it will tell you when to connect the printer.

Cari
www.coribright.com
 
Ahhhh...

I was sending my reply earlier and thinking...hmmmm...I
wonder if I should have used the wizard instead of
letting the PC XP system find the printer? Actually,
within the wizard is the choice of letting XP find the
printer....so, I thought I was on safe ground. But now I
will go back and decline that choice and then within
wizard pick the Epson 740 from the list. It sounds very
similar to me but obviously must not be. I wonder then
if it is possible that the XP driver for the 740 which is
stored in the CAB part of the windows hard drive could be
corrupted at the source? If so, then maybe using the XP
CD to pull down the driver? Just talking outloud
here....I will use the exact process you mention. Also,
I have downloaded for the back up possibility the win2000
driver and monitor status software.

Ok, I am your student! Let me go back and faithfully try
your great suggestions again (and do them
correctly/exactly) and report back.

Thanks once again for putting me back on track.

John
 
Cari,

Just to be complete, on the Epson web site, there is no
XP driver so I have always come back to the XP signed
driver within the XP O/S itself. That is why I never get
to the coribright article step 7 to run the exe
software. On the Epson web site there is a win2000
driver and system monitor software so I will try that and
be able to use your 9 step process exactly.

Back soon with the results,

John
 
Cari,

Your student is back after trying the detailed process
and a number of combinations. Results are:

1. win downloaded win2000 driver and status monitor,
results were the same (partial print photo and reset
required). in the readme on win2000, though, it said it
may be necessary to add virtual memory. I made that
change and that did not help. The test photo I am using
is 11MB via a photoshop adobe 7.0 print command by the
way.

2. with XP drivers, as I mentioned, there is no CD nor
is there any new XP driver or any XP driver on the Epson
web site. XP driver is only available as a signed driver
within the XP O/S. But, there are two ways to add the XP
driver...one is to let XP system find it and add the
printer w/driver or second way is to pick the printer
from the list and add it manually both ways are via the
wizard process. Both gave same end result....partial
photo print and system hang-up.

3. So, I have a convoluted process which does work.
Using the desktop software (Photoshop) and the home LAN
to drive a network win98 laptop and the same epson 740
printer off of the laptop.

4. But, my inquisitive engineering nature continues to
want to search for the natual working solution with the
desktop XP system.

Any further thoughts to find a solution? Still running
EPP in BIOS and plug and play enabled.

Thanks so far for your assistance,

John
 
I'd be tearing out my hair at this point John..... (which is something I've
been doing recently with my DSL connection so I 'fired' my ISP today...and
get a new one Wednesday! After two months of constantly resetting the DSL
modem I lost my temper with them... I can only take so much!)

If you want really nice photo pictures, it's Christmas on Thursday... think
about a nice new USB printer! Parallel ports are really on their way to the
great outdated hardware heaven....sad but true... along with gameport
controllers.

There are so many great photo printers out there right now and prices are
good... please go and have a look at some. You won't be disappointed. I'll
keep my fingers crossed that Santa remembers you were really good this
year.. and tried everything there was to try.

Cari
www.coribright.com
 
Thanks for all your help and suggestions. This is such
an interesting challenge when you bring different
hardware, software, upgrades, connections, and equipment
age together to keep these things running. I don't know
how you keep up with all these subtle and not so subtle
variations associated with printing. Reading the forum
postings makes it look like an almost impossible
challenge. But....it makes for good business for the
printer manufacturers. You almost have to upgrade
everything at the same time!

I had actually bought a Cannon i860 last week with the
small droplets and multiple inks but...guess what?... did
not work well (thin colored lines thru the final photo
print). The "old" epson prints even excluding the line
issue still looked better.

But soon everything will be free based on the nice prices
out there. PCMCIA wifi laptop card for $8 for example (I
am in Silicon Valley where the prices are quite low).

All the best,

John
 
Cari,

Just a courtesy feedback msg. Finally succeeded.
Printer has a usb port as well (had never used it). XP
driver still did not work with the usb port and your
process but then switched to the win2000 driver and the
XP status monitor. Second XP driver still self installs
but I use the win2000 driver/printer. Beautiful photo
prints now!! And the status monitor is fully working.

Thanks again,

John
 
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