Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

hi, i had a problem with qimage crashing, i installed the latest version and send job to printer but it doesnt do anything, my question is there a way to restore qimage settings to earlier time?
any help appreciated.

Well, tough questiob
Do you have the current printer diver installed? Have you ever saved a job or a printer setup>
You can hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys when you start Qimage.Fred

hi Fred, i have the latest driver installed, shes an old large format printer designjet 5500 , ive never really messed around with the settings so not sure where to look for saved job or printer setup, i think i may have done some where along the lines, this is the message i get when trying to print, it sends the job but the printer doesnt jump to life, it used to work perfect before the software crashed on me this morning.
regards
terry.

In the majority of cases like this, there was a change to the driver or a Windows update that made prior settings incompatible so going back to an earlier state won't help.  The solution in these cases is to hold the shift key while you click on the "Properties" button to open the driver settings.  That forces the driver to load fresh settings from the latest driver/Windows and it'll clear any prior settings.  Then you can make your settings in the driver and when THOSE are saved, they'll be updated to the new protocol.  Just remember that if, after that, you load an old job or saved printer settings in Qimage, that may reload old settings and you may be back with the same problem (old settings being incompatible).

Regards,
Mike

tried that still not working, i think this is what happened this morning and the message has come up again, maybe you can work it out from this mike.
Regards.

win version=10
phys mem=4294967295
avail mem=4294967295
Q ver=v2020.120
printer=HP Designjet 5500 42 HPGL2
page=Page 1/1: 35.603 x 11.103 in.  (300 x 300)
interp=Max-300 PPI/Max-300 PPI/Vector/5 (Default)
crop=off
info=off
prtr icc=Let printer/driver manage color
brdr1= 0.00
brdr2= 0.00
hyper printing=off
border+=off
error loc1=7
error loc2=17
ix=0,ix1=0,iy=0,iy1=0,ix2=954,iy2=954
px=93,py=16
origwidth=10496,origheight=3300
pwidth=10496,pheight=3300
iwidth=10496,iheight=3300
dpiscale(printnum)=1
scale=1
sscale= 1.00000000000000E+0000
sharpmult= 1.00000000000000E+0000
printbmp.width=10496
printbmp.height=3300
bmp2.width(calc)=955
bmp2.height(calc)=955
initial mem=2145
addl mem=1031
mem err=0
current mem=1168

Tez, after  a bunch of trial and error, I managed to install the driver that you specified.
Could you tell me some of tthe settings you want to try to restore?
Paper type, paper size, print  size, and will see if I can do anything.
FRED

Hi Fred, i basically had qimage and had problems from the very outset, i had partial prints and mike helped me out a lot and finally sorted the settings out, qimage has been working fine for months, then this morning sent some prints to the que (about 15 each 2 copies) and i got some error, it hasnt worked since, i run a small printing business and my workload is stacking up by the hour, basically i was hoping to restore the software previous state when qimage worked fine, i use matt coated paper roll 36" wide and print each image on a canvas size 36" x 11.5" and i have a designjet 5500 (old lass but she is a workhorse) so i am at a loss of what to try next.
Regards.

OK that helps. So far, I can get it to print.... but  since I don't have the printer, I get, Trying  to print. Cannot find printer
Have you visited DEVICES and PRINTERS?
All the settings appear to be controlled in that part of the driver.
Meantime, let's see what Mike finds. Do you do backups on your  system from time to time?
Fred

hi, yes i have looked at devices/printer settings, i think they are the same as they was when all was well, i will take a screenshot of the print settings in qimage see if they are the same as your setup please fred.
Regards.

Cant see your page size. Mine is set to letter, and is still odd numbers.
The HP divers for all the design jets including the Z 3100 and 3200, are at best squirrely and defective.
Mike has had discussions with HP about a fix, and it didn't happen.
So Mike is the best help you can get.
fred

ok thanks for your help Fred, i really appreciate it, here is a screenshot.
Regards.

hmm, looks like i will have to try figure this out myself  ::)

I( dont know if this fact based, but I will relate my morning experience.. Opened QU and tried to print. Wanted permission.
Then I wanted to enter the Image editor for a cutout. Locked out! Went to my wife's computer to double check QU. All good.
Back to my QU and try tp restart it. Will not close.I went to task manager, QU not listed  Could not close from there.
So I shut the computer down and restarted it. Opened QU and it was still asking for me to give a name to my print. I went into Preferences, and found many settings changed. I was getting error messages with locations. Enough!
I rebooted again and went to Devices and printers. I removed your HP driver that I had installed. I rebooted again.
CLEAN as a WHISTLE All back to my normal Qimage.
I cannot explain what code contaminated my Qimage, But I swear this is a true occurrence. I wish Ernst would post. He runs all models of HP and is really good.
Fred

thanks for your help Fred, its frustrating as it worked fine for months, i changed no settings then boom!, would process prints but would not send them to the printer, i love the software as i can send quite a few prints to the printer  at once rather that hp webaccess sending one at a time, i have even tried uninstalling/reinstalling but even when i delete the qimage folder before reinstalling all the settings are saved print driver settings stored job ect, maybe i am doing something wrong when uninstalling.
Regards.

Fred wrote me a PM for help. My knowledge of HP  printer drivers is not as wide as Fred suggested, HP Z3200-PS and Z3100 only. Right now I have QU .119 installed and the oldest HP Z3200 PCL3 driver that was made for Windows 10, could even be a W8 driver. I archived several versions of HP drivers when they became available as I know newer usually does not mean better with HP drivers. Printer is now 12 years old.

The 5500 is a workhorse and there will still be several in use. Their users will probably be a better source of information on its drivers on different Windows versions than I am. I might suggest the obvious answers or be totally wrong, so do not blame me for that.

Is there a PCL3 or a PS3 driver for the 5500?  I wonder whether that HPGL2 driver is compatible with Qimage Ultimate, Mike will know. Ethernet connection to the printer and set the IP correctly? It is not always going correct in auto mode, manual is better.  Pinged the connection?  Tried other software with that driver and does it print then and the system not going belly up?

The shift key pushed and Properties clicked brings the printer driver settings to default. I have asked for a feature like that as the QU integrated driver menu creates internal havoc when HP drivers are used with QU. Be aware that you better create a good printer driver default setting with the printer driver preferences in Windows. For example I have an extra large custom print page size there so any job images/nesting fits. I use Application Color Management and have that also set in the default mode. More of that so what I need to change in Properties is a little as possible and I can trust the rest being default. When all set and okay in Properties = real printer driver I ignore anything of the real printer settings as shown in QU's menu, for my taste they may become greyed out  In QU. When recalling a job, I check the job text, I accept the QU specific menu settings but still do the shift/properties route and okay there as remains of the job before can make havoc again in the printer settings.

What changed for me with W10 is that I no longer can have both the PCL3 and PS3 driver installed for the same printer.

I doubt this will solve your problem.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

Hi Ernst, thanks for your reply, i have no problems sending print jobs to my printer using the webaccess and also had no problems with qimage as i have been using it for months, then all of a sudden while adding prints to the que i got an error which i posted here, after that qimage wont even wake the printer up when sending jobs to the printe, i am at a loss.
Regards.

seems to print to my other printers, its just the dj 5500 for some reason.

If you are saying that QU prints to your other printers, and chokes on the DJ 5500, sort of focuses suspicion on the 5500 settings or corrupt driver.
No?
Fred

After doing some more research, it looks like the HPGL2 driver is a vector driver and can't accept raster data (images).  So what is happening is that Qimage tries to send the first chunk of the image via sending it through Windows in the normal manner and Windows returns an error: Qimage recognizes the error and throws that long error message data you posted.  In order to print images, you'll need a driver that can handle image data.  I'm not 100% sure about HP's convoluted driver options but I notice if you go to the DJ 5500 driver page, it only offers the HPGL2 driver if Windows 10 64 bit is selected.  You might try selecting Windows 10 32 bit instead: that offers a package that comes with both the HPGL2 and RTL drivers.  Try installing that and see if the RTL driver in that package works.  Qimage runs in 32 bit mode in order to support both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows (from Windows XP through Windows 10) so I'm thinking even though you are probably running Win 10 64 bit, the Win 10 32 bit DJ 5500 driver (RTL) should work.

Worth a try anyway.

Regards,
Mike

hi mike thanks for the reply, i havent unzipped a file in a while and have tried to using winzip no idea as what to do, when i unzip there seems to be no setup icon,
Regards.

When you select Win 10 32 bit on the HP site for the DJ 5500, you get this:

(https://i.gyazo.com/3b85a6b9134bbb8432395ee33b6b491c.png)

It's an EXE.

Mike

hi mike, when i unzip this all i get are these files, none of them seem to be .exe file , maybe i am doing something wrong here.
Regards.

It looks like it doesn't want to install a 32 bit driver on a 64 bit OS.  HP may have removed the RTL (raster) driver from Windows 10 64 bit installations which is strange: why only provide a "plotter" driver for an inkjet printer?  The only thing I can suggest at this point is contacting HP.  They don't seem to offer normal Windows drivers for that printer so I have no idea what they are doing.  Unfortunately... they may not either.  ;)

Mike

Hmm, maybe this is why i am having problems, thinking about it, it was around this date qimage gave me problems before this qimage was working great.

just an update and may help other users new patch (highlighted) did the trick for me all good with the dj5500 now !  ;D

Wow!  Good work!  I would never have expected the spooler since that normally sits between the driver and the printer.  But I guess in this case, the problem fed back into the driver and caused the driver to error.  Glad it's back up and running.

Regards,
Mike

thanks mike and thanks everyone for your input, much appreciated.  :)