Thanks Mike for your help and patience, I appreciate it!!

I'll look for the HP Utility software and remove it to see if it does the trick.

I look forward seeing feedback from Ernst if he sees this posting.

Regards,
Kelly

Mike,

Thanks very much for the feedback and direction.

I was able to delete all Z3200 drivers (only the divers but not allowed to delete the related packages) except one (HP Designjet Z3200ps 44in Photo).  I got an error message that "Failure to remove driver... this printer driver is currently in use.", even though I removed the printer already.  I thought may be there's some files stuck in the print spooler, so I went to the "C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Printers" folder but found it empty.  I then went to the "C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Driver" folder to look for the driver, but found nothing that I recognized.

Research on the internet so far indicates this driver might be corrupted; but offered no clear ways to remove it.

I looked for the corrupted driver in Apps and Feature, it's not there.

My brains are about fried at this point, any help to move on to the next step is appreciated.

Kelly

Thanks for the fast response. 

I want to uninstall all Z3200 drivers also and start over, but so far haven't figured out how to do it.  There is no such option in the Print Wizard, or within the Printer Properties window, at least no obvious to me.  It would be great if I can get some direction to go about uninstalling the Z3200 drivers.  My OS is Windows 10.

Thanks

Mike, thanks for your feedback.

As soon as I connected to the printer with a USB cable, my laptop automatically added the printer but with the wrong driver (Photo V4) as the default, this driver has no option to select custom papers inside of Printer Preferences.  So, within Printer Properties I changed the driver to the one that I had used successfully before the partial printing problem (Photo Version from 2012, see attached).  After installing the new driver, I tried to open up Printer Preference but got an error message “operation could not be completed”.  When I tried to open Qimage, I got the error message “Unable to load printer driver settings for HP Designjet Z3200ps 44in Photo”.

I tried other drivers on the list too, but ran into the same issues.

I'm at a lost of what to do next?

Regards

Mike, thanks for your feedback and direction. 

Resetting the Printers and Settings tab in Qimage as directed did not help.  Only .15 inch of the image was printed.  By the way, the HP Print Preview screen showed complete images after I was done with the resetting; but it gave me an error message when I hit the Print button on the preview screen “Error printing on HP Designjet Z3200ps 44in Photo… The printer couldn’t print Qimage”.  I had to turn off the print preview option in order to print… but it only printed the .15 inch partial images.

After downloading the PCL 3 driver from HP as recommended for the next step, I tried running it without success.  A screen showed up for a fraction of a second indicating it was trying to extract something from the down loaded file, but nothing happened after that, I found no extracted files in the same folder (see attached).

I looked for a PCL 3 driver within the Add Printer Driver Wizard, but found no such file for the Z3200 series of printers.

I also tried to restore the current driver by pointing to the .inf file (in Add Printer Driver Wizard; “Have Disk” option) that I found in the Microsoft Update Catalog.  However, I got an error message of “The third-party INF does not contain digital signature information”.

I am at a loss of what to try next!?  Any suggestions?

Regards

I have a HP Z3200ps printer that I have been printing four 8x10 images across the width of a 44-inch roll of paper without any issues.  Based on suggestions on the internet that I need to periodically clear the memory bank of this printer, I would do a cold reboot by unplugging the power cord from the wall outlet while the printer was on, and leave it like that for at least 4 hours before powering up for printing again.  In addition, I would delete all the files on the printer before the next printing session.  I was able to use this process successfully for eleven times in the past five months to print out multiple images as described above.

Then two days ago, I followed the same process but only 2 inches (out of 8 inches) of the images were printed before the printer stopped.  I unplugged the power cord and left it like that for 24 hours and repeated the process, then I got six inches of the images (out of 8 inches) instead.  I thought may be more cold rebooting was needed, so I unplugged the power cord for another 24 hours and tried again.  In addition, I changed the printer's I/O timeout option from 30 seconds to 30 minutes just in case.   This time I only got 1 inch of the total images!

I’m now at a lost regarding what to do next.  I look forward to any feedback that can help point me in the right direction.  Attached is the printer setting in Qimage for your reference.

Best Regards,
Kelly

P.S. I just found that I had a file in the system (bands of different colors; 1.35 MB), which I used to exercise the printer on a weekly basis if I wasn’t making prints.  I printed this file out six times in the past.  I don’t think it is the root cause of the partial print issue… just want to fully disclose what I found.

Mike,

Thanks very much for the fast response and taking the time to go through my questions, and providing very thorough explanations and instructions.  Unfortunately, the filter that I created based on your instruction did not stop the printer from covering the whole page with the Gloss Enhancer.  Also, I made sure it was selected under Print Filter before I hit the print button.  I’m just totally lost about what to do next.

When I tried your second option of RIGHT clicking the “Page Background Color” button under the live view to reset the page background color to white, the screen blinked once without a separate window coming up for color selection.  Is that normal?

With respect to the size problem, I think I found a clue based on your feedback.  For some reason the Resizing Option inside Printing Preferences of the driver was set to “90% of actual”.  Although the actual size of the print is 93% of what it was shown in Qimage, I will reset that parameter to 100% for my next try.

I appreciate any other ideas that would stop the printer from covering the whole page with the gloss enhancer ink.

Best Regards,
Kelly

I have a HP Z3200ps printer that I have been printing multiple 8x10 images across the width of a 44-inch roll of Hahnemuhle ultra smooth inkjet paper (matt) without any issues.  I would trick the printer by creating a custom size of 44x66 inches.  Once the printer is done printing the four 8x10s across the top, it would move the paper out of the printer 66 inches, just like a 44x66 sheet would.

Today I tried the same process with a different paper, a 44-inch roll of “Hahnemuhle photo rag bryta high-gloss” with two 9x16 aspect ratio photos; and I ran into some problems.  Since this is a high gloss paper, I turned on the “Gloss Enhancer” option to have it cover the whole image, which is something that I always do with this kind of paper when single images were printed.

Using the custom size option in Qimage, I expanded the images to approximately 11x20 inches each with a boarder of 1 inch all around (2 inches between the photos), the two images were oriented side-by-side in landscape mode across the 44-inch width of the paper.

Instead of 11x20 inches photos, I ended up with something slight smaller… 10 1/2 X 18 7/8 inches.  The bigger problem was the printer continued to print after the two images were completed, but in gloss enhancer only.  I finally hit the “cancel button” on the printer’s front panel to stop it after about another 6 inches of paper were covered with gloss enhancer.

I think the “Gloss Enhancer” option causes the printer to cover the whole 44X66-inch sheet with it.  I did a search online and found a post by Ernst Dinkla that explains how he used “a print filter in Qimage with a small correction on a curve that brings R-G-B 255-255-255 to 254-255-255. That way the whites in the image get GE too but not the border.” 

Below is his instruction in Qimage… “First set an image in the print queue, then go to actions>preview-queue actions>batch process>batch filter. Clear any settings there (bottom of menu), go to curves (top of menu), select Red and click at the top of the line, change numbers next to the graph: the input to 255 output to 254. Click OK on the preview window. Go to the top left of the total window and save the filter there as say: Gloss enhancer Economy mode cure. Extension is flt. Go back to the batch filter menu and click clear and after that cancel. Remove the image from the print queue.  Now click on the P filter choice at the bottom of Qimage's normal menu. The filter is now available and if selected it will only be used at print time as a last step in the print process on all images in the print queue. If you want to use it per image in the queue you have to right click on that image and use the predefined filter choice selection. The filter will appear there too.”

The problem is that I couldn’t find those options in Qimage.  Mr. Dinkla wrote that post back in 2010, are those options still available today but may be hidden somewhere in the tool?  How do you create a filter in Qimage?  Is there something that I can read up about it?  Is there a different way to apply gloss enhancer to a certain color channel?

Best Regards,
Kelly

That's good to know.  I'll keep my eyes open when the next Windows update comes around.

Thanks,
Kelly

Sorry, this is the first time I used the quote button... my reply is follows,

I don't know how check for number of Windows 10 updates I've had.  Based on Windows Specifications under "System Settings", I have Windows 10 Home version 2004 installed on 9/3/2020, so the last update was done back in September this year... hope that helps.

Thank you for laying out the options to install the driver.  They will come in handy when the current driver gets corrupted sometime down the road.

I don’t know why I have so much problems with HP drivers.  I’ve never had a driver for my Z3200ps printer that lasts longer than a few months without getting corrupted, I hope this one will be an exception.

I followed your direction to the search box and was able to find and download the 61.121.362.41 driver for my HP printer.  Thank you very much for your help!!

In the future, when my current printer driver gets corrupted again, what’s the best way to get this backup driver activated?  Use the “Add Printer” option in Windows and then point to the folder where the .cab file is stored?

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your response.
 
I have had so much trouble with other HP drivers on the Z3200ps, so I was really excited about find this 61.121.362.41 driver that works.  And I’m glad that you have good experience with it too.

BTW, I checked my Download folder also.  There’s nothing from yesterday when I went through the “Add Printer” exercise.

Hopefully, someone knows about how to identify/locate this driver and willing to share the process with us.

Kelly

Yesterday I had to remove the Z3200ps printer from my laptop due to a corrupted printer driver.  I used the “Add Printer” option in Windows to add the printer back on.  The driver installed through this process is a “HP Designjet Z3200 44in Photo” model of version 61.121.362.41 released in April, 2012.  It works great and allows me to sync the paper presets from the printer to my laptop in HP Utility.  I want to store this driver for future uses in case the current driver gets corrupted again.

The OS on my laptop is Windows 10 (64 bits).  I searched for the above printer driver (61.121.362.41) on the HP software site without any success, even though I searched under OS Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP; but it just isn’t there.

I looked into the "C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository" folder, but really don't know which file is the driver for my Z3200ps.

I searched the internet also, found sites such as rocketdrivers.com that claimed they have that driver for download; but I’m not sure if I can trust that website?  A site called “Microsoft®Update Catalog” by MS claimed to have that driver also, but I got an error message when I tried to download it.

I’m sure someone on this website had run into issues like this before, I would appreciate any help in finding the printer driver mentioned above and store it in a folder?  Also, how would you re-install it if my current driver gets corrupted again?

Thanks,
Kelly