Crash When Printing From Any Program

I am using Windows XP Professional. This installation is new; very little,
outside Microsoft Office 2007 and the Novell Client, have been added to the
installation. There are no viruses or spyware.

The printer being used is an HP LaserJet 4300tn. It is connected to 25
computers via network (using a TCP/IP port).

When I attempt to print from any program, from any of these computers, to
this printer, I receive a "Notepad has encountered a problem and needs to
close. We are sorry for the inconvenience" error message. I am then
presented with the opportunity of sending the message to Microsoft.

Only one thing I have noticed will temporarily fix the issue: if I stop and
then restart the Printer Spooler service, it will then print perfectly.

The crash of the spooler is the clue. You have corrupted printer drivers.
Uninstall and reinstall them.

Do NOT miss out Step 4. If you do, you will simply end up reinstalling the
corrupted drivers.

Unfortunately, this did not work. Well, it did work initially, but when I
restarted the machine, it returned to its old ways.

I disconnected the printer by temporarily disabling the network connection
(as I said, it is a networked printer). Then, I deleted the printer from the
"Printers and Faxes" window and also removed the driver from the "Print
Server Properties" dialog box. Next, I restarted the computer and
immediately readded the printer, using the newly downloaded driver from HP.

I tried to print from Notepad, and it worked without a hitch. I did the
same from Word 2007, and that worked fine, too.

I then restarted the machine. Then, I again tried printing from Notepad --
it crashed, just as it did before. The same happened with Word 2007.

Here is something else I noticed: if I restart the Printer Spooler service
(using "services.msc"), I can print one time (and one time only) again.
Then, it begins to exhibit the problem again once I try to print.

Here are some events from Event Viewer, for what it's worth:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Hang
Event Category: (101)
Event ID: 1002
Date: 1/15/2009
Time: 2:37:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: B4_R41_C01
Description:
Hanging application notepad.exe, version 5.1.2600.5512, hang module hungapp,
version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.

Update: It seems now that the crashes are somewhat random. I can print
successfully approximately two times out of ten. I cannot understand this
problem at all.

is corrupting memory of the process in which it is loaded thus causing the
termination of the process.

Can you open the printer properties and get an explorer popup stating some
of the pages cannot be loaded?

Alan, I'm not at work at the moment, so I will give you a more definitive
answer tomorrow morning. Having said that, I believe I was able to
successfully go into all the properties tabs for the printer, like
"General,""Sharing," "Tabs,"etc.

Nonetheless, let's assume that I try it tomorrow and it does indeed say that
some cannot be loaded. What would that indicate and what would I do about it?

I pinged the HP print driver developer who works out of Redmond. He did not
have time but had asked which printer model is this driver for?

One deficiency which HP has continued through the years (I've discussed this
with HP so no disrespect intended) is the incompatibility of previous driver
version registry settings with the next version of the print driver.

Basically, version 1 print driver writes x registry key. Now version 2
driver comes along and the end users (you) updates version 1 driver to
version 2. When version 2 driver reads the registry keys, it does not
handle the version 1 data and the process which loads the data can terminate
or handle this exception and complain (this is the popup in explorer).

HP's recommendation is to completely uninstall the old driver (which means
deleting the printer, the driver, and uninstalling any other software that
was installed with the setup.exe) and then reinstall the printer using the
new driver. This is not a simple feat when you have 200 of these devices
installed on a print server.

The printer is an HP LaserJet 4300tn, and I went to HP's site to grab the
latest version of the driver for that model. Specifically, I used the HP
LaserJet 4300 PCL6 driver. (Just for kicks, I completely uninstalled and
removed the PLC6 driver from my system and tried replacing it with the HP
LaserJet 4300 PCL5 driver, and that had the exact same problems.)

I don't think driver-version incompatibility is the problem. The Windows XP
installation is fresh, so that printer driver was the first I had installed
on it.

For now, I have removed the LaserJet 4300 driver and replaced it with a
LaserJet 4000 driver (which was last updated in 2003, unfortunately), and it
works like a charm, from what I can see. In the little testing that I have
done so far, I have not gotten the 4000 driver to crash at all. I don't like
doing that, but this printer *must* work.

Even though I've found a workaround, it would still be nice to know why the
*actual* driver for this printer is having these issues. Doesn't this -- and
the fact that this Windows installation is updated and fresh -- point to the
problem likely being with the LaserJet 4300 driver itself rather than
anything else?

Yes the driver is the issue.

Contact HP and verify if an updated version of the driver will be available.

[Bill_D]

Jason, I know it has been some time, have you resolved this issue. We are having the same problem with Novell and the "P" series HP laserjet printers. I think HP might be coming out to take a look, but I have only found one or two other people having the same issue and was wondering if there was a fix yet. Thank you for any information you might be able to give. Bill