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an unknown printer error occurred

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  • 13 have this problem
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  • Last reply by gattaca

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an unknown printer error occurred after upgrading to FF 27.0

I have attempted ALL of the recommended troubleshooting and recovery tips:

1) Resetting FF 27 completely - did not work and cost me a a lot of time to recover. 2) Removing all the printer references from about:config - did not work 3) removing the prefs.js - did not work 4) removing and then reinstalling FF 27 - did not work 5) Starting FF in Safe Mode - did not work

Also, when you try to open the Printer Preferences tab on the Printer Dialog from in FF, I get NOTHING. Someone else asked this on another thread with the same problem.

It was working FINE with my printer UNTIL this FF 27.0 upgrade. Not the latest upgrade to Thunderbird is ALSO now broken... Whatever you guys are doing is breaking printers!

This works 100% fine in IE and any other application on my system.

an unknown printer error occurred after upgrading to FF 27.0 I have attempted ALL of the recommended troubleshooting and recovery tips: 1) Resetting FF 27 completely - did not work and cost me a a lot of time to recover. 2) Removing all the printer references from about:config - did not work 3) removing the prefs.js - did not work 4) removing and then reinstalling FF 27 - did not work 5) Starting FF in Safe Mode - did not work Also, when you try to open the Printer Preferences tab on the Printer Dialog from in FF, I get NOTHING. Someone else asked this on another thread with the same problem. It was working FINE with my printer UNTIL this FF 27.0 upgrade. Not the latest upgrade to Thunderbird is ALSO now broken... Whatever you guys are doing is breaking printers! This works 100% fine in IE and any other application on my system.

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Sorry, hit enter too soon. The only way I've been able to fix this is to reboot my entire machine, then FF 27 printing may work for a while and then stop again. I've not been able to determine if there are any "triggers" to when it stops playing nice w/ the printer. Thanks.

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I saw your other post indicating the problem is after waking from Windows' sleep or suspend modes. Firefox had some issues several versions ago when, after waking from sleep, some pages took minutes to redraw. But the part of Firefox outside of the content area worked normally, so I think this new issue is not related to whatever that was.

When Firefox is unable to print to your real printer, can it still print to a virtual printer, such as a PDF printer driver? If you do not have software such as Adobe Acrobat or NitroPDF, you can test using a free PDF printer driver such as:

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Hi, Thanks for the reply! I will attempt this and post here the next time either FF 27.0.1or Thunderbird 24.x behaves this way. It is just too much of coincidence that they both started this after updating but it could also be some of the Anti-viral software reacting to a new version. I did try turning that off last round and neither would still print, so then I rebooted.

I have Snagit and I believe it has a vPrinter. I am also not 100% whether it is either or/and 1) Hibernate (write contents to drive) and/or 2) Suspend (sleep). 3) duration of uptime.

I use either of these depending on how long I'll be away from my machine. Gone for the day - hibernate, gone for an hour - suspend.

Sometimes I do not actually need or perform a full reboot but every couple of weeks... so it may be a duration.   I'll post my results here over the next week or so.   Right now it is behaving after a reboot and simple suspend of less than 24 hours.
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OK I have the scenario:

Thinkpad printing fine in den, not docked, using a wired / cable network connect etc.. 1) Suspend machine, walk into office 2) Cold dock it with docking station with machine suspended 3) Unsuspend machine 4) Surf, need to print an invoice 5) Attempt to Print to normal network printer --> no

   Attempted to print to Snagit virtual printer --> no
   Attempted to print to Quicken vPrinter --> no
   Attempted to print to 2nd network printer --> no

6) Can I open any defined Printer Properties pages in FF or TB --> no 7) "An error occurred while printing..." from FF 27.0.1 8) From TB 24.0, no error message, the print dialog opens and when I select print, the dialog box disappears like it's going to print and then no printouts.. and I do not get "An error occurred while printing.." 8) Time to reboot.. Something is not getting reinitialized properly. I keep all my stuff current and ever since version FF 27.0 and TB 24.x no dice. Im current at FF 27.0.1 and TB 24.3.0. Thanks.

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If you think this is due to the recent update from Firefox 27.0 to 27.0.1, you could try reinstalling Firefox 27.0. I will message you a link.

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Hi, Thanks for the suggestion. I considered that but it is not my first choice as I've had problems in the past with various versions installed as that creates it's own set of potential issues. At this point, I will j"ride this one out", it will get fixed in some version. I can print from IE or screen cap and print that in the meantime.. Thanks for all the suggestions and comments. Cheers.