Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Printer won't print after Snow Leopard update

Hi:

I'm troubleshooting this for a friend and am not a Mac person... .

He recently updated his system to Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549). According to him, immediately afterward his printer would no longer print photos or documents. Using the printer utility (Epson -- forgot the Model#) I was able to successfully print a test print but not any documents. I got the following error when trying to print a document (header only):

Date/Time: 2011-11-18 15:17:33.947 -0800
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6


Anonymous UUID: 0A950582-B725-47DF-99B9-C410E6064656


Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x000000000000000c
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread


Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

***********

Following advice from similar problems -- though not exactly the same -- I:

1) Repaired the user permissions. That didn't work.
2) Created a new Admin level user then tried to print from there. That didn't work.
3) Shared the printer with "anyone". No go.
4) My neighbor said he'd uninstalled and reinstalled the printer driver. No joy... .

Any ideas??

Many thanks,

George

Hi, and welcome to FineTunedMac.

> He recently updated his system to Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549).

From which version of OS X did he update?

> My neighbor said he'd uninstalled and reinstalled the printer driver. No joy... .

Has he visited the printer manufacturer's Web site to see if there are any updated drivers?

As Artie suggested there may be more recent drivers on the Epson web site or you can find the complete set for OS X 10.6 and 10.7 as a single download on MacUpdate. However Epson does not always provide update drivers for older printer models with new OS X releases. In that case try the Gutenprint (a.k.a. GIMP-Print) drivers here. FWIW I have always preferred the Gutenprint drivers for Epson to the factory drivers.

Many thanks. I'll try that next. I assume uninstalling then reinstalling a print driver is fairly straightforward on a Mac? Do you think there's a problem with permissions? This was indicated as a problem with other Kernel errors (which is the word search I did).

Also, a very quick look at the Gutenprint site. Do I understand correctly that the installation is a kind of all-in-one driver? Or does the installation contain in it the specific driver for this Epson (the model of which I'll get tomorrow...)?

Thanks again!

George

As noted by artie and joemikeb, the problem is likely the old driver.
My sister experienced the same problem when she updated within Mac OS X 10.x (I don't recall which). It was easy for her to update but she didn't realize that her (Canon) printer required a new driver (which I sought out and installed for her after she told me about the update).
Similarly for me. When I got my new iMac with Lion installed, fortunately there was an immediate (Lexmark) driver update available via Apple.

OK. Sounds good. I looked more closely at the Gutenprint drivers (though not yet the Epson site 'cause I don't know the printer) and the former looks like a complete set of anything he's likely to need. He's a retired professional photographer. His printer is a quite a few years old but, from that list, seems likely to be supported.

Thanks all! I'll update here when I have a chance to load the new driver.

George

I don't know which Epson printer he has, but you might want to pass on my experience as a photographer (albeit, amateur). I originally had an Epson SP 1270, then upgraded to the SP 1280. It served me well for many years but I decided to get an Epson Stylus Photo R2880. It works beautifully with Snow Leopard via drivers that I downloaded from Apple. The prints are knockouts and I'm very, very pleased with it.

Hi again:

Just thought I'd leave a note for other non-mac folks in case of similar problems. As everyone here figured, it was the driver. I got an update off the Epson site, though I wasn't impressed with their instructions.

1) Initial instructions said to run the "update software" utility under the Apple menu. That only showed that safari and something else needed updating -- not the printer.

2)But I just went ahead and downloaded the recommended driver and then installed. When I went to do a test print, I had the same problem -- printer error and no print.

3) So I decided to Add a new printer and got a new one available on the menu. Presumably the one I'd just installed. Still not fully up to speed on how Macs handle new drivers, I went to print and, again, no joy.

3) But aha!, the available printers listed a new one. So I switched to that and it worked. So then I went into printers and just deleted the old one.

So everything's good now. Not as easy as I thought it would be -- assumed new driver would just replace old, but it installed it as a whole new printer. (Incidentally, I think it's an Epson Stylus cx4200 -- something like that...).

Thanks again for suggestion!

George