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can anyone help please my printer is going slow
Hi All
Recently my printer has been struggling a bit and am not sure if it is the printer or the laptop. The print head normally goes back and forth without a delay between passes but now it does one pass and stops for 5 seconds and goes back 😕
I’m not sure if the laptop can’t send the info quick enough so the printer is waiting for it or the printer can’t receive it quick enough 😕
Any ideas as it’s taking me about an hour to rip and print a 20mb file at 1000mm x 2000mm.
cheers
Warren
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21 Replies
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have you emptied your temp rip files lately? 😀
the rip will automatically empty them if the print happens uninterrupted, but if a print is aborted they remain untill they build up and slow the computer. -
Is your computer multitasking Warren?
I recently installed a new PC simply to drive the printer. The older PC was normally logged onto the internet while the printer was running and this always slowed it down considerably. Signing off resulted in the printer running at its normal speed again.
Close any other applications you have running – this should help
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Hi Warren
How much memory has your laptop got. I would say the PC isn’t feeding the printer a steady data stream, is your hard drive busy while its printing. Is your printer connected by usb or Ethernet. Mine can slow down when downing things as mine is connected through a hub by Ethernet and the Internet can take some of the bandwidth sometimes.
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Do I empty it on the laptop? I did a full clean and defrag the other day and it didn’t help.
Nothing else is running on it, only the rip.
I’ll have a look around and see what I can find as I have been known to cancel the odd print 🙄
cheers guys
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i found my folder by accident. it is on your laptop somewhere,
you run a mac dont you?, I’m not sure where on it but it is on a mac, but its under rip files on my pc. -
Hi Ian
My rip is on the PC laptop, I’ll do a search but there was a function to clear rip in the drop down menus so have done that and will see how it performs.
cheers mate
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Warren
it could be a profile or setting problem, you can set printers to pause to allow ink to dry say on photo paper etc maybe you have just knocked a setting on. Also are you printing at a very resolution because that can cause the printer to pause again to allow ink to dry etcKev
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Hi warren, what sort of printer is it? what RIP software are you running?
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It’s a Canon W8400 and using PhotoPrint 5
I just finished delivering prints so have nothing else to print so will do some tests after I have fiddles with everything.
You know what it’s like when you get something and it just works so you never fiddle with anything, then one day it goes wrong and you have no idea and a big learning curve all at once 🙄 :lol1:
At least it still works well albeit slow sometimes 😀
cheers
Warren
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we recently had the same problem with our Canon IPF 9000…It turned out that the USB cable we had connected was too long and it was taking ages to send data done to the printer…..You can imagine how sslow it would have been especially as we print 40-50m on it daily….
We moved the laptop closer to the printer and used a standard small printer cable and it works finr now.
many Thanks
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cheers mate but it was working fine and this happened fairly recently, I am going to do a few things and will report back with my findings
cheers
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Warren,
My SP540 sometimes does that. It happens when I am printing while running Corel, and then start working on bitmaps, which opens Photo Paint, and leaves large files on the clipboard.
I must add, it normally resumes normal operation after a slow strike of 3 mins or so.
Funny thing is, when I print PVC banners (on the generic PVC profile) it starts OK, then after printing about 30cm it goes into "slow strike" for a couple of minutes, then prints normally after that…..
I also disabled the antivirus on the PC driving the printer. This also helped to prevent slow cycles. Maybe Windows Vista is a virus ????
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Have you installed any new software recently ?
Only asking as a couple of weeks ago I put the new version of internet explorer on, and suddenly the cutter was running really slowly – cutting a bit, then stopping for a second, then cutting a bit more.
Went through everything I could think of, and it didn’t help, then had a brainwave, uninstalled IE and after restarting the PC the cutter ran fine and cut continuously as before.
IE was doing something in the background that was interrupting the data flow to the cutter.
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Hi Gert, no it’s not that as I only use the laptop to rip and print jobs.
but….
I think Mike is on to something, I seem to remember an IE update the other day and usually I ignore them because I don’t use the laptop for anything else but the pop up kept coming up telling me to do it so I just did it, I think it has been since then it has been running slow.
watch this space.
cheers
Warren
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If you have system restore running on the PC, try restoring to a point a couple of days before the update was installed and this should fix it without breaking anything else.
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good point that IE update is a right pain with other progs took ages to get rid of it.
chris
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Definitely sounds like a data bottle neck problem. Perhaps the laptop is struggling on larger files?
Also, on some solvent machines there is a setting in the machine which could be parking the head to recharge head voltages every so often? But this is more a setting that a tech would play with though, and I’m not sure if it applies to inkjet equipment?
I would start at the data transmission though. Good luck.
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Latest is;
un-installed IE8 and it made no difference. I think it’s the laptop is old and is now just too slow (although was working fine a few weeks back 😕 )
The rip says "printing" and the % done increases quicker than the printer prints, so when the rip says 70% done the printer has only done about 50%, then when the rip says done the printer kicks in to gear and runs at normal speed 😕
so is it the laptop that can only send so much info at a time or the printer can’t receive it quick enough (?)
cheers
Warren
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If the laptop used to do it then it should still do it, so something is slowing laptop down.
Try a registery clean perhaps (I use eusing reg cleaner, free to download)
Could be something silly like a lead or a dust blocked fan on the laptop, I put my laptops on a couple of blocks of wood to help circulation, sure speeds them up!
Ian :lol1:
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quote Warren Beard:The rip says “printing” and the % done increases quicker than the printer prints, so when the rip says 70% done the printer has only done about 50%, then when the rip says done the printer kicks in to gear and runs at normal speed 😕
so is it the laptop that can only send so much info at a time or the printer can’t receive it quick enough (?)
A lot of RIP programs aren’t giving a percentage of how much is actually printed, its often how much data has been processed and sent to the printer.
Honestly, it still seems like a bottleneck problem to me.
But I don’t know why it’s only just started happening? Sometimes PDF files can be a nightmare to RIP even though they are reasonably small file sizes. Been using CS4 PDFs on your RIP lately? -
ah laptop…
on vista there is a power/battery setting….
High Preformance / Power Saver /Balanced…. maybe that
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