Ubuntu

Firefox causes printer to spool paper

Asked by Reggie Bowers

I have an HP Photosmart 7150 printer connected to a dual boot machine running Windows or Ubuntu. The printer works fine in Windows. The printer works fine in Ubuntu when printing open office documents and pdf files. But when ever I try to print from Firefox, the printer begins to spool blank paper. I have to cancel the print job and turn off the printer to make it stop. This printer used to work fine with Firefox until about two months ago. I do not know what changed to corrupt the printer driver. I have deleted the printer and added it back, but that did not solve the problem. I tried to remove and reinstall Firefox, but the system would not let me remove it because "one or more other applications use it". Also, the printer works fine when using the Opera web browser.

Any help on how to fix this will be immensely appreciated.

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Riku Eskelinen
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Riku Eskelinen (kingi89) said : 		#1

Hi Reggie and thanks for your question.

Have you checked that Firefox's printer configuration is correct? At least for me, it has the paper size set as "Letter" (which might or might not be correct, for me it isn't) which might sometimes cause printer to act weirdly.

NOTE: If this solves your problem, do not forget to mark this question as Solved. Thank you.

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Reggie Bowers (hobbit-esawireless) said : 		#2

The paper size is set to "letter" which is correct in my case.

Firefox pages used to print correctly. But something changed (I don't know what). Is there a way to reload Firefox?

Thanks for your help.
Reggie

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Best Riku Eskelinen (kingi89) said : 		#3

You can remove your personal Firefox settings by opening Terminal (Applications » Utilities » Terminal or K » System » Konsole) and typing following to it:
rm -R .mozilla/

If that doesn't help, you can remove Firefox and purge its global configuration by typing following to the terminal:
sudo apt-get --purge remove firefox

And then reinstall it:
sudo apt-get install firefox

Please note that it will ask for your password ("Password:"). Then type it and press Enter to proceed. Please note that there will be no dots or stars displayed as you type it.

NOTE: If this solves your problem, do not forget to mark this question as Solved. Thank you.

Revision history for this message
Reggie Bowers (hobbit-esawireless) said : 		#4

Thank you VERY much Riku! Using your instructions I removed my personal Firefox settings first, but that did not solve the problem. My printer continued to spool page after page of blank paper.

So then I removed and reinstalled Firefox using your second instructions and that seems to have fixed my problem! Yeah!!!

Thank you SO much!
Reggie