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Fix paused printers once and for all?

Why can't Apple fix once and for all the problems related to paused printers?


No, resetting the print system, removing the printers and adding them back is not a solution. First it doesn't work all the time.

It affects all my printers, so no, it's not a driver problem, it's not related to my Epson, Canon or Brother printers. It's related to macOS that definitely can't handle printing professionally.

No, switching to CUPS, PCL generic or Airprint doesn't help. The protocol is not at fault here.


No, it's not a USB hub problem, even when directly connected to the Mac, it doesn't work. It's not a cable problem, tried several ones.


Each time you print, it pauses. Then when "resuming", the printers print about a few millimeters and pause again.

No it's not cable problems, ink or toner problems, router, etc...


Just bought a new Macbook Air for my wife. Monterey installed. Upgraded it to the latest version out of the box. Does the same now with her two printers, one Brother and one HP.


I'm a software engineer and system engineer since 1980 so I think I'm pretty savvy and know that it's not the usual "Your printer is the faulty one". No it's not.


It's an OS problem that just can't handle printing, a very basic task.

It's just crazy.

Posted on May 10, 2022 11:16 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 11, 2022 7:09 AM

I'm definitely not the only one complaining. If you google "mac printer paused"...


Most of the solutions offered by Apple is to remove the printer and add it back.

But on daily basis or 10 times a day if you heavily need to print, it's just a workaround, but not a professional solution.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 11, 2022 7:09 AM in response to ku4hx

I'm definitely not the only one complaining. If you google "mac printer paused"...


Most of the solutions offered by Apple is to remove the printer and add it back.

But on daily basis or 10 times a day if you heavily need to print, it's just a workaround, but not a professional solution.

Jun 5, 2022 6:45 AM in response to sjordi

sjordi wrote:

I'm a software engineer and system engineer since 1980 so I think I'm pretty savvy and know that it's not the usual "Your printer is the faulty one". No it's not.

It's an OS problem that just can't handle printing, a very basic task.
It's just crazy.



Use a cable connection if your issue is wireless...

You can manage CUPs from your browser if you have issues with the software.


click the link or copy & paste into your browser to interact w/ CUPS management—

http://localhost:631 see the admin


if you have no interface, from the terminal.app copy & paste:

cupsctl WebInterface=yes



Administration>Jobs—if you have jobs backed up or stalled remove them from the queue and try again.

May 11, 2022 10:54 AM in response to sjordi

Have you updated the firmware on those printers? Maybe a printer firmware update is needed to work with Monterey. Or maybe you have automatic firmware updates enabled on your printer and perhaps the last firmware update has broken something.


Do any of your printers support an Ethernet or WiFi connection to the network so you bypass the USB for troubleshooting purposes?


Are you using any anti-virus software, cleaning apps, or third party security software that may be interfering with the normal operation of macOS? Try booting into Safe Mode to see if you still have the same printing issues which should disable third party software from automatically running (use a printer which supports AirPrint and is configured with the AirPrint driver).


There is also a chance that these printers are having trouble with the formatting of the document being printed. I know that HP laserprinters in particular have all sorts of driver, firmware, software, and document formatting compatibility issues when printing seemingly simple text & PDF documents, so I can imagine more complex professional print jobs may introduce issues as well. Do the printers contain enough memory to support the professional print jobs you are sending to the printer? If the printers do not have enough memory to process the job, then you may get these conditions. With some printers the print driver may pre-process the document on the computer, while other printers will perform the document processing within the printer itself. Make sure you are using a printer that is compatible & suitable with the type of print jobs you may be sending to it. Not every printer is made for every type of complex document that you want to print.



May 18, 2022 12:37 PM in response to HWTech

HWTech,

Thanks for your answer and sorry for the late answer. I went through all different tests and ended up fully reformatting my Macbook Pro 2020, the 2013 and a recent M1 Macbook Air.

Didn't install anything else, just fresh format + Monterey install.

Then I did an image of those 3 Macs in order to be able to revert back (kind of VM snapshots)

Zero printer drivers installed, all 5 printers are Airprint compatible.

Tried printing Airprint, via USB and via Ethernet.

Same problem on all Macs and all printers. That makes 15 different configurations.

Before and after upgrading firmwares on all printers.


Ethernet printing is the one behaving the best, the least worse: it lasts about 2 days before pausing the printer.

Brother, HP, Canon, Epson and I borrowed a Dell printer from my neighbor. All end up pausing.

So I doubt it's a driver, or 3rd party tool that conflicts.


Also did start all Mac in safe mode (it's very slow of course) and adding a printer is fine, you print once, it's ok, twice, it's ok, thrice and it is paused.


And printed at work too on an OKI Laser. It was paused before even printing a single page.


For each configs, the only way to be able to print is to each time fully remove all printers via Reset Printing System and add them back. One can expect about 2 jobs to complete before it fails.

I would say that for me, everything started when they released Cata(lina)stropha. it looks like this OS started the long route downhill for printing.


Now I gave up. I save everything as PDF, sends it via Nextcloud to my HP Windows laptop and print from there. Hassle but the only way to actually print each time I send a job in the queue .

Jun 5, 2022 2:10 AM in response to HWTech

Hi

Sorry for the very late reply. I've got a lot of work, so I stopped tinkering around with the printer.

The list-full-installers lists just the latest one as I formatted and started from fresh. So there is no way back to another version. And frankly I don't have time to investigate.

But I noticed something now that my laser printer is connected via Ethernet. It stops too but doesn't actually switch to pause mode. Only that eventually the pages end up printed, but it could take more than an hour.

I printed a 10-page PDF the other day, it stopped printing after page 4. Went jogging for an hour. Came back, still those 4 pages. Took my shower and then, all pages were printed...

During the entire process, the queue is always shown as empty, no matter what printer I use.

The Canon inkjet just always pauses, never prints. I have one in Airprint, another one with USB. Same thing.

My wife's laser Brother behaves erratically. Prints fine for a week, then doing funny things again for a couple of days. Her inkjet HP stopped printing too.

If we switched to her former Macbook Pro, they both print fine. The out of the box fresh Macbook Air 2020 doesn't.

It's really crazy.

I've tried on other networks, office Wifi, no Wifi at all, etc... that doesn't change anything.


Anyway, I inted to fully reformat my Macbook Pro again this summer, print only TextEdit files to see how printers behave.

Then add my apps one by one to see whether somethings "triggers" such behavior, but I doubt as my wife and I don't share the same apps and configurations, and printers all have problems.


Steve

May 18, 2022 5:17 PM in response to sjordi

Wow, I'm impressed! I wish more people would go to such lengths to test and write up the report in such a nice easy to read & understand format along with all the relevant details. Good job.


Did you print from the Windows laptop to one of your printers at this location with your Macs?


Did you associate your AppleID to any of these clean installs or did you just create a new local macOS user account with no association to an AppleID? You can see I'm really grasping at straws for you.


Did you try printing from TextEdit printing just a simple text document (I would not even save the document when test printing)?


From everything you mention, it suggests something with a macOS update although I haven't seen any posts on these forums about an issue as @ku4hx mentioned. The only thing I can think of to confirm is to test from macOS 10.14 Mojave (or maybe 10.13 High Sierra) which should not have any recent security updates which macOS 10.15+ all may share.


You could also try to see if you can download an earlier version of one of the 10.15+ versions of macOS with an earlier point release which worked before you noticed the problem. I'm not sure if it is possible to download an earlier point release, but you can get a list of downloadable macOS 10.15+ installers to see if they offer an earlier point release. You will need to use the command line "softwareupdate" utility to get a list of available macOS installers and if an earlier point release exists, then you can try downloading it using the command line (just make sure to delete any later point release versions located anyware on the Mac unless stored in an archive file). This option I believe is only available starting with macOS 10.15 Catalina. You will need to create a bootable macOS USB installer to use a point release installer.


List available macOS installers:

softwareupate  -list-full-installers


Download an installer from the list (pick a particular version from the list output by the previous command), for example (I added the "-d" option for "download only"):

softwareupdate  -d  -fetch-full-installer  -full-installer-version  11.5.2


See this link for details:

https://macreports.com/how-to-download-macos-installers-using-terminal/


How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support


If you can confirm an earlier point release works fine with a clean install, then it most likely means one of three things. You found some really obscure bug since I have not seen any other reports, or there is something with document's formatting that is triggering an issue, or your Mac has some sort of hardware issue that is causing the problem with a later macOS update. An obscure macOS bug seems the most likely out of three unlikely choices. Just make sure no external devices are connected when testing the print jobs.


This may be something you need to escalate to an Apple engineer especially since you've tested with clean installs on several Macs and printing to several printers using USB & Ethernet. However, I can see this may be something that may never get solved unless the next macOS update magically fixes it since an Apple engineer usually needs to be able to reproduce the problem in order to fix it or gather the necessary information from the macOS logs.



Jun 5, 2022 9:47 AM in response to sjordi

macOS 12.4 Monterey was recently released so see if that update changed anything.


sjordi wrote:

But I noticed something now that my laser printer is connected via Ethernet. It stops too but doesn't actually switch to pause mode. Only that eventually the pages end up printed, but it could take more than an hour.
I printed a 10-page PDF the other day, it stopped printing after page 4. Went jogging for an hour. Came back, still those 4 pages. Took my shower and then, all pages were printed...
During the entire process, the queue is always shown as empty, no matter what printer I use.

This would normally tell me it is the formatting of the documents causing the problem. If the macOS print queue is empty it should mean the document was sent to the printer and the printer is attempting to process the document. Older printers, and printers with very little memory can easily take a long time to process some documents.


If we switched to her former Macbook Pro, they both print fine. The out of the box fresh Macbook Air 2020 doesn't.
It's really crazy.

I've tried on other networks, office Wifi, no Wifi at all, etc... that doesn't change anything.

However, this tells us it is a macOS issue, so it is possible that the recent macOS patches have somehow modified the information being sent to the printer making these printers have to work harder to print the document (if at all). Since it happens with different printers & drivers, it may be something more generalized such as the basic printing system unrelated to any specific driver.


Try printing a file from the command line. Maybe it will bypass some of the higher level macOS features which may be causing a problem. There are a couple of different ways to do this. While I have printed from the command line before (Linux, but the process is similar), I haven't done so in a long time. I did discover this option in a quick search:


List all printers:

lpstat  -p


Choose a printer name from the list and use the following command as a template making sure to replace "<printer-name>" with the actual name of a printer from the previous command and where is says "<path-to-document>/document.pdf", just drag & drop the file onto the open Terminal window from the Finder to auto-fill the correct path to the document (don't type "<path-to-document>/document.pdf"):

lp  -d  <printer-name>   <path-to-document>/document.pdf


So, if the name of a printer is "Canon1234" and the document is stored in your Documents folder as "Test-doc.txt", then the command would be something like this:

lp  -d  Canon1234   /Users/hwtech/Documents/Test-doc.txt



There is also an "lpr" command:

lpr  -P  <printer-name>  <path-to-document>/document.pdf  


Which using the same info as before it would become:

lpr  -P  Canon1234   /Users/hwtech/Documents/Test-doc.txt


Note: It is important to make sure to retain the upper case or lower case characters on the command options indicated by the hyphen/dash character. The "-P" is an upper case "P". The same applies to the printer name as well.


Fix paused printers once and for all?

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