They have Vista (and I don't know a thing about vista).

They have a very nice HP Photosmart HPC4280 printer.

They were trying to print a page off of the internet. Printer was turned on. It indicated that it was printing. Nothing came out. I checked to see if the documents were in the cue. They were. I cancelled the printing jobs.

I then went into Control panel and saw 5 copies of this printer. It said something like. HP Series 4200 Copy 1, etc. Copy 2 through Copy 5.

I asked them if someone installed multiple copies of the printer but they had no clue.

I then selected one of these and set it to default printer.

I then restarted the whole computer. When everything came back on, I did a wordpad document and hit the print button, thinking my wordpad test document would print, well guess what printed? The internet page that she was trying to print.

I said 'what??

So what I gathered from this is that the printer DID get the message to print from the internet and it printed.

So now I said "let's do a test page of the printer. I did this because when I tried to print any wordpad document, nothing happened.

Oh, I should mention this. When we tried to delete the multiple copies of the printer stuff a little box on the bottom kept asking her (as the administrator) to continue to "install the printer" ?????? Have no clue why it was doing this.

So I get to where you click on 'PRINT TEST PAGE", I clicked on this.

Nothing happened.

That's when I said "let me go and ask the people on the computer forum"

So we have a Photosmart printer (that indeed did print a page off of the internet), but now prints NOTHING.

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks much

Melody

sometimes things get scrambled and you can try a few things-

clean out the extra copies of the printer only one is needed and make sure it is the default
check the properties & settings on it - maybe it is holding in Q any print jobs? etc

another option download a fresh copy of printer files from the HP website
and re install it fresh

It IS the default printer (I printed from the internet, remember), it printed one time, and then it wouldn't even print a test page. I checked and it IS set to default. And there are no items in the cue.

Now how does one clear out those multiple copies of the printer?

We tried highlighting (let's say we are trying to delete HP 4200 Copy 5.)

I highlighted, red clicked on the word DELETE, and a pop up window indicating that only the administrator can perform funcitons and she needs to click on the continue button, (I did this, and it said "need something or other to install printer" ) We don't want to install anything.

I just wanted to delete all those copies. She has no idea how all those copies got there.

But actually, why would it matter. If Printer (copy2) is set as default, and it did print a page off of the internet, why on earth would it NOT print a test page, or from Wordpad.

we re-started, and nothing changed. Oh, actually, something did change, that's when it printed the one page.

I know nothing about this Photosmart Printer and I really don't know anything about Windows Vista.

It's very different than what I am used to "XP"

Thanks much if you have anything else for me to do.

And I don't think they will be going online and downloading new drivers, etc..

Melody

for the duplicates - i just prefer to remove them, but it's not needed.

If they have the install cd for the printer - then uninstall it, reboot and do a fresh re install.

UPDATE.......All is well, she fixed it.

I see her yesterday and she goes: 'I fixed the printer".

I said "how on earth did you manage to do that?'

She said: "Remember all the multiple copies of the printer in the printers folder?" I said "sure". She said: 'Well, each printer copy had things in the cue"

She deleted all of the things that were in the cue for all those printer copies.

Once she did that, the cue was cleared.

She then was able to print whatever she wished to print.

Wish I had thought of that.

Thanks VERY much for all the input.

I have another question (for me) that I'm putting up.

Melody