Printer very slow in Vista

Ok, A new Dell Inspiron 530 with Vista Home Premium OS. Dell 966 All in One printer w/usb connection that takes about 2 minutes to recognize a print job. Another 2 minutes to start the process. The printer seems to be getting the data very slowly in small bits. When it finally does the print job, the results are fine. Just very slow. Interestingly the disc that came with the printer says it is for XP with no mention of Vista, and there appears to be no update for the driver. Firewall was suggested as a possible source but I have ruled that out. My guess is driver issue. Any ideas?

Cuzn

 

I don't know if you've seen this yet, might be what you need.

 

Thanks for the info. I did see that and from what I could tell the update is for a wireless setup. I am using a usb connection. Do you think it might still help? I have seen on other forums a lot of people have had issues with their wireless setup. A lot are not able to print at all. I guess I should consider myself fortunate since I can at least print. It has been suggested to check my firewall settings and printing preferences which I have tried. I did see one post mentioned that they set the compatibility mode for the printer to XP and that seemed to resolve their issues. I think I might try that but it seems kind of odd that I have a Vista OS but need to run it in XP to get a Vista compatible printer to work right. lol

Cuzn

 

Give compat mode a shot, you've got nothing to lose at this point. I tried it last year with my older HP XP printer disk but the suite would not even load at all no matter what I tried though it was a 3 year old printer which surprisingly HP made a Vista driver for. Since this is a new system, I'd give Dell an earful!!! at least for some satisfaction if not anything else.

 

Yeah I think I'll give compat mode a shot today and will post the results. If it was my choice I would have waited a little while before upgrading to Vista. This reminds me of the service pack 2 update for xp a few years ago. After reading about all the issues that software had with the update I waited for about 6 months before updating and by that time most of the issues had been worked out and the update went very smooth. I wonder if they are waiting for MS to have an update for Vista before releasing new drivers.

Cuzn

 

Well I tried to run the printer in compat mode but I get the same results. I tried the copy function on the printer and it worked perfectly. It is clear that there is an issue with the printer communicating with the pc through the usb. I guess I'll just have to wait and wait and wait for new drivers.

Cuzn

 

Have you tried simple things like removing the driver completly and reinstalling, diferent usb cable, different usb port on pc?

 

Another thing to consider is the type of document you are sending to this printer, and the drivers it is using.

If you print a postscript document (such as a .PDF) to a printer using PCL drivers, the drivers have to convert the document, before spooling it at the printer.

Sounds like this, to me.

General rule of thumb is use postscript drivers for graphics, PCL for text. You get much faster, and much more accurate prints this way. I've taken to the habit of installing printers twice on my user's machines so that they can choose which drivers to use for the job. Would it be possible for your to do the same?

 

Thanks for the reply, yeah I tried my home usb cable which I know works fine, and switched usb ports, both have no effect. I am reluctant to reinstall I guess because the printer does do what it supposed to do just very slowly. But you are right, about all that is left to try is reinstall. It appears that not many other people are experiencing this problem with their Vista os and printer. From what I've seen it either works fine or not at all.

 

Try printing a PDF and a text document from notepad - do you get the same lag on both docs?

 

Mada can you explain "PCL drivers"? I'm not sure what that is referring to. Also I don't understand the practice of installing printers twice. I have not compared the difference in print time for a pdf or simple text document yet. I have tried a simple document created with notepad with a few lines of text and the results are the same. I'm guessing a pdf file is not going to be any faster. Your analysis sounds right I just don't get the fix.

After reading your post again I am thinking that by using the printer properties I can set the type of print job like text, photo, graphics etc. And this would more or less make the necessary adjustments that you are talking about. Let me know if I'm getting warm.

 

There are two main protocols for printers, called Printer Command Language (PCL) and PostScript (PS).

There is a pretty decent explanation of the differences at this link.

Some documents are better handled by one or the other. In the example of PDF files (which are PostScript documents), when you print it to a machine using PCL drivers, the driver has to first convert it into PCL format, which takes a good deal of extra time. Whenever my users do something like this, they have a significant delay sending the document to the printer, and another delay AT the printer!

So now, I always install the same printer on each computer twice, once using PCL drivers, and the other time using PS drivers. Then I label them 'Text' or 'Graphic' printers accordingly.

I'm curious whether this is the same delay that you are seeing. Can you post the make and model of the printer?

 

Ok thanks for that info I have a better understanding. The printer is a Dell 966 All in One although I understand it is really a Lexmark. Vista Home Premuim OS. I believe I used the default setup when installing the printer software. I'm gonna take a look at the installation disc again to see what the optional installation package offers.

 

Ok I checked out the installation disc for the printer and the only other option besides the usb driver was the wireless setup. I tried to reinstall the usb driver again and I am getting the same results. I realize that everything about the software is very slow, just opening the options and printer preference pages takes at least a minute. I am convinced that the software though compatible with Vista is not optimized for it. At least I know the routine now, start the job go take a leak, make a cup of coffee maybe make a phone call and it should be done.

 

I have two Canon printers, a BJC-2000 and a BJC-3000, about 8 years and 7 years old, respectively, as I recall. They are connected to my Win XP desktop PC. I bought a Notebook in July 2007 and installed both printers to print via the wireless network connection to the Win XP desktop PC.

I visited Canon’s website to see whether they had drivers for either or both printers for Vista. I found none. So, I let Vista search for a driver and it did have a driver for both printers. This works fine. Other than waiting for the printers to wake up and go through their initialization routine if they’ve been inactive for awhile, there’s not much waiting for them to respond. Once I issue a print command, they’ll respond within seconds.

I’m wondering whether you should try uninstalling your Dell printer and then install it again, leaving your CD out of the picture, and whether Vista offers you a driver for it. Perhaps it will not, since your printer is apparently much newer than my Canon printers. Perhaps having older printers happened to be an advantage in my case.

 

Yeah, I guess that makes you about even there. Can't get a vista reinstallation disc but it locates vista drivers for 8 year old printers! lol Where did the drivers come from? MS or the vender site?

 

Actually, the BJC-3000 may be about 6 1/2 years old. I can't recall exactly when I purchased it but I found the article/review dated Jun 26, 2001: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/printers/0,39051176,20001266p,00.htm Anyway, that's still quite old and, as I said, I found no Vista driver for it on Canon's website.

So, where did the driver come from? The best answer I can offer is that Microsoft has embedded numerous drivers in Vista for older printers and other devices, in Vista itself. I don't recall that I had Vista search for drivers online when I set up this printer in my Notebook PC. I would not have seen any point is choosing that option, since I had already visited Canon's website and found no driver specifically for Vista.

 

Now that you mention it I think I remember seeing some other options for drivers in the printer options page. I wasn't sure what they were for but it could be just as you suggested. Just made sense to use the driver that came with the printer. Thanks will check it out.

 

I have the exact same problems my my Dell AIO 926. It's a pain....I called Dell and they told me useless stuff like buying more RAM etc....

Im going to try disabling all firewalls services and AVs

 

disabled zone alarm didn't worked
uninstalling zone alarm did work

the problem was ZoneAlarm TrueVector crap service that was preventing some DNS protocol I think and it can't be configured with the free version

 

Wow, no kidding, I have zonealarm also. Too bad I like it. Good work figuring that out. I disabled it also but didn't think of uninstalling it. Thanks for that info. What are you using now?

 

Update on my printing problems in Vista. Uninstalling ZoneAlarm did the trick. No more delays for the print job to begin. Disabling the firewall will not work, it must be uninstalled. I was using the free version for Vista. Maybe a new version will be better but for now I am using the Vista firewall. Thanks everyone for your efforts.