HP Printer – Print jobs keep disappearing

We bought a new all-in-one printer, it scans, copies, it’s wireless and even prints from my mobile phone, but what it isn’t doing is printing from my laptop!

The print jobs keep disappearing from the print queue instantly, this includes test pages.

(Ignore the girly butterfly sheets…)

Here’s a few things I tried to get the printer working correctly after a lot of Googling:-
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Printer: HP Deskjet 2542

Trial 1: Run Printer Troubleshooter

I tried this before Googling for any other answers; the outcome? No known issues found with the device. *sigh*

The Printer troubleshooter will attempt to automatically diagnose and fix your problem.

Open the Printer troubleshooter by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type troubleshooter, and then click Troubleshooting. Under Hardware and Sound, click Use a printer.

Open the printer troubleshooter

Additional reading: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Open-the-Printer-troubleshooter

The device was set as the default printer and ‘ready to use’, but I still couldn’t print / print jobs keep disappearing.

This screen-shot was taken seconds after clicking the print button… 0 Documents to print.

Trial 2. Uninstall / reinstall the printer

Even though the troubleshooter found no known issues with the device, I uninstalled it and then reinstalled the drivers using the disc provided. Unfortunately, this didn’t resolve the printing issue.

Trial 3. Restart Print Spooler service

To restart the Print Spooler service

You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps.

1. Open Administrative Tools by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type administrative tools, and then click Administrative Tools.
2. Double-click Services.
3. Right-click the Print Spooler service, and then click Properties.
4. On the General tab, next to Startup type, make sure that Automatic is selected… It was!
• If the service is not already running, under Service status, click Start, and then click OK.

Unfortunately, this didn’t fix the issue. 🙁

So, I tried amending the recovery settings for the Print Spooler:-

1. Right-click “Print Spooler” and select “Properties”.
2. Click on the “Recovery” tab and change all 3 drop-down boxes to “Restart The Service”.
3. Make sure the 2 text boxes underneath say “1” in them.
4. Click OK until you are back at the Services window, close it.
5. Go back into the properties of the “Print Spooler” tab and be sure to click Start to restart the Print Spooler service and it will restart the service immediately.

I learned that the Print spooler depends on the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service and if this service is disabled it can affect printing. So I searched for RPC using the method above and checked the automatic was selected. It wasn’t so I fixed this and tried printing again… No luck!

Trial 4. Rename the HPBXPSRENDER.DLL file

After uninstalling the printer again, the HP support website itself (getting desperate by this point for a solution) recommend renaming the HPBXPSRENDER.DLL file and then installing the printer.

1. Click the Start button, and then type %windir% in the search field.
2. Double-click the System 32 folder, double-click the Spool folder, and then double-click the Drivers folder.
3. Double-click the x64 folder or the w32x86 folder, depending on your operating system, and then double-click the 3 folder.
4. Right-click the HPBXPSRENDER.DLL file, and then click Rename.
5. Delete the DLL suffix, type OLD in its place, and then press Enter. The file name now displays as HPBXPSRENDER.OLD.
• When the “If you change the file name extension, the file might become unstable. Are you sure you want to change it?” message displays, click Yes.
6. Close the window.
7. Now re-install the printer / drivers.

That didn’t work either. 🙁

Hopefully, the above solutions may work for you. They appeared to work for everyone that isn’t me. Haha.

I’d like to note that I’ve been searching for a solution for the best part of 3 – 4 hours now! All I wanted was to print a letter for my pension provider. 😉

Since my mobile phone is able to send jobs to the printer and I can use the scanner (to my laptop) and the copier on the printer, I assume it’s an issue with my laptop… Hmm…

Update (08/06/2015):
Following on from my post above, previous post the printer works perfectly with my parents laptop.

The general consensus is that the issue is with my laptop itself as it will no longer print to any of the printers in our house hold; and that the best course of action is to restore to factory settings. 🙁

If you’re anything like me you’re a bit lapse when it comes to regular back ups for your computer… I haven’t done one in six months!! :-/