FF 9.0.1 and printing

[stuck]

For info...

Over the last few days I've had to correct problems with printing from FF to network printers by manually deleting the relevant lines, i.e. those beginning:
user_pref("print.printer_
and the one beginning:
user_pref("print_printer
from the prefs.js file. Had to do this because editing this file 'properly', i.e. by entering 'about:config' into the location bar, did not work.

Having taken this brute force approach then, on restarting FF, the deleted entries are re-written to prefs.js and the user gets paper out of the printer instead of 'helpful' messages like "an unknown error has occurred" on screen.

Ken

[StuartR]

Nothing similar here.
FF 9.0.1, Windows 7 64 bit

[stuck]

I should have mentioned, incase it has a bearing, our network clients are still all XP boxes.

Ken

[John Gray]

I've always had problems with FF printing entirely blank pages (bar header and footer) for specific websites (Google Maps and some Microsoft technical articles are notorious for this), but I haven't noticed anything worse in FF 9.0.1. XP Pro, too!

[stuck]

I suspect it is a peculiarity of our set up. We have 'normal' networked printers that appear in the style \\printservername\uniqueprintername in the printer dialog and most of the time we stick to our own preferred default printer, since it sits within the office.

We also have some large pooled printers (\\printservername\genericprinternme). If we select one of those beasties we can collect the output from which ever of these large machines we choose, typically the one that's 'nearest' (aka a long way from your desk down the corridor, round the corner, in another room ) These benefit of large machines is that they can print on to A3 paper and recently we've need to do that.

I think it is switching between several printers that can confuse FF and so the relevant lines in prefs.js can get corrupted in some way, e.g. I found duplicate lines for some printers. Deleting the lot means that when FF restarts it has a clean slate to write on and thus it gets it right and there isn't any stray junk left behind to cause problems.

Ken

[John Gray]

We have a similar setup (but only four networked printers: two A4 laserjet, one A4/A3 colour inkjet, and one A4/A3 large-capacity photocopier/printer!) but, as I said, I haven't had a problem with this...

Although, having just looked at my prefs.js I find a load of stuff relating to printers on a file-and-print server that was replaced two years ago!