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firefox no longer recognized my installed printers please help!

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  • Last reply by ljaques

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I believe it is since firefox requested that I update silverlight however everytime I click on print in firefox I'm asked if I want to install a printer. Several are already installed and previously worked with firefox and currently work with chrome and all other programs. please help. I have uninstalled and reinstalled firefox several times since this started occurring and am about to give up. please help

I believe it is since firefox requested that I update silverlight however everytime I click on print in firefox I'm asked if I want to install a printer. Several are already installed and previously worked with firefox and currently work with chrome and all other programs. please help. I have uninstalled and reinstalled firefox several times since this started occurring and am about to give up. please help

All Replies (17)

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Hello crazyjimbrown, try to Reset all Firefox printer settings and check it again.


thank you

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Firefox retains information about all the printers you have used, and clearing that information often helps solve printing problems. This article describes how to do that (in addition to the last used printer setting, you will see other settings you can reset if you like): http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problems_printing_web_pages#Reset_printer

Sometimes you may see a dialog saying that the print spooler service is not running, yet you can print from other Windows software. There is more info on how to address that here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problems_printing_web_pages#Print_spooler_service_is_not_running

Any luck?

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tried this one, no print.print_printer in file so apparently firefox does not know I have printers installed

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went to do this "show folder" button does not open anything?

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The Show Folder button should open your currently active personal settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder. An alternate way to access that folder is to paste this into the Windows Start menu search box and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Because the name of the folder contains random characters, you'll have to navigate down the next level manually (I can't include it in the above link).


Did you try the about:config method? Might be easier.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste printer and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Right-click print.print_printer and choose Reset. You can reset your other printer settings as well, which may take many clicks.

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in the about config method all the printer reset settings are greyed out. I was able to use internet explorer to find the profiles (actually 5 folders empty) but I'm not sure what to do there

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I'm not sure what you mean by this --

all the printer reset settings are greyed out

-- are the settings already clear, so there's nothing to reset?

I'm not sure why you have 5 empty profile folders, but one of the folders should contain your currently active settings files. For example, your bookmarks would be stored in the places.sqlite database file and there would be currently dated backups in the bookmarkbackups sub-folder.

By the way, have you restarted Windows since this problem started in case any updates are still pending or incomplete, awaiting a restart?

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yes they are clear. I uninstalled and reinstalled firefox 5 times using revo uninstaller since the issue started so I guess that's where all the folders came from. I restarted windows 2x each time I unistalled before reinstalling.

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Could you check the print spooler service issue as well?

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When I press {Ctrl + P} to access the "native print dialog box", I get Printing Error "Before you can perform printer-related tasks such as page setup or printing a document, you need to install a printer. Do you want to install a printer now? yes or no if I hit yes it takes me to windows printer set up where I already have printers installed which are recognized by everything else except firefox

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Thanks, I see you are not getting the spooler error (and the steps in the article for the print spooler problem aren't actually possible...).


Do you start Firefox with any custom settings, such as start up switches like -no-remote or sandboxing software that isolates Firefox from the system for security?


When you used Revo, did it remove all of your personal settings (toolbar customizations, add-ons, etc.)? If not, please try a new Firefox profile. You can easily switch between profiles using the Profile Manager as described in this article: Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles.

In the new profile, you also can disable nonessential plugins here:

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Plugins category

Any change?

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I deleted all profiles then re-installed firefox with a new clean profiel and it still tells me I need to install printers

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What printers do you have installed?

If you do not already have a PDF printer, could you try installing one of the following free PDF printer drivers and see whether it shows up in Firefox?

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I tried to get some paid tech support to fix it and they spent 8 hours on it and came up with "you don't have the print.print_printer file so just use google chrome when you need to print" which is not really a solution so I think I'll ask for my money back there. Anyone know how to install the print.print_printer file?

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Hi crazyjimbrown, in Firefox 19, it seems that print.print_printer has been shortened to print_printer, at least on my system. In any event, it's a preference (in about:config and prefs.js) and not a separate file.

To add a preference, you can use about:config or you can manually edit the prefs.js text file. Note that prefs.js is updated when Firefox shuts down, so you should close Firefox before editing it. Mine has this line:

user_pref("print_printer", "PDFCreator");
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There is no print.print_printer but there was a print_printer, which I reset. Now what? It doesn't prompt me to install a printer or anything. I was able to reinstall the spooler via Windows and I can now print in IE (ick!) but no joy in FF. It worked once after I tested it with a text editor print, but once the computer was rebooted, it lost the settings. What the heck, Over?

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Oops, forgot to add my config: Win7pro, Samsung CLP-600N/XAA