Printing problems with LinkStation

[wdurham]

   

I have a Linkstation HS-DH320GL, firmware v 1.06.

 

I've owned it for about 15-18 months. I have no problems at all with the HDD. It functions exactly as it should, although a bit slow, with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 PCs all connected to the network.

 

When I first installed it, I plugged in an HP Laserjet 1010 to one of the USB ports, installed the relevant drivers on all the machines, and had no problems. Printing was perfect, just as if the printer were connected locally. Then one day it just stopped. Completely.

 

The XP and Vista machines could still see the lp printer over the network, inspect properties etc,, install drivers and connect to the printer. But none of them could print. All documents sent to the printer ended up in the Windows Print Spool folder.

 

A new machine running Windows 7 has now been connected to the network. The identical problem remains. The lp printer is visible over the network, I was able to install the drivers, and connect to the printer. But documents simply don't print - they just stack up in the Windows Print Spool folder.  If the printer is switched from the Linkstation USB port to any of the computers, printing is faultless, so there is no problem with drivers or with the printer. It's just the interface between Windows and the Linkstation print server which has broken down. I initially suspected that a Windows update had broken the interface - but with both XP and Vista machines on the network that seemed unlikely.

 

I have resorted for now to hanging the HP Laserjet 1010 off one of the PCs and sharing it over the network. That works, but it entails one of the PCs always being on and "awake", which is a nuisance. I bought the Linkstation, in spite of the fact that it was slower than some other NAS drives,for the print-server, which worked faultlessly for a year, but  will not now accept documents for printing either from the Windows print spooler, or direct from the application. I have trawled this site and the internet for solutions, but found none  that have worked.

 

Any ideas?

[Kameran]

What you can do is update the firmware on your device, also once you update the firmware I would reinitialize the device to factory defaults and see if that helps this issue.

[thequickone]

   

I have suffered the same sort of problem for about a month now. After a bit of really frustrating searching around, including on these forums, I have found a fix that worked for me. I cannot take credit for the actual fix, please see the article at the following link:

 

http://www.alexfalkenberg.com/2009/10/06/linkstation-windows-printing-problem-solved/

 

Follow the instructions in the article and the linked Microsoft Support HOW-TO page, and you should be up and printing again.

 

One note; when you get as far as specifying your "Name or address of server providing lpd:" and "Name of printer or print queue on that server", you will enter the networking name (HS-DHGL###) and "lp", respectively. I am running XP Pro SP3, and there may be minor variance in what these fields are called on other versions of Windows. No slashes, forward, reverse, or otherwise, should be entered into these fields.

 

On a positive note, this also appears to get rid of the annoying "Remote Downlevel Document", or whatever it was called, being left in the print queue all the time. Not that it ever made much difference...

 

On a negative note, it appears I formatted/reformatted, initialized, updated firmware, etc., and deleted all my shared files for nothing. If you did the same during your troubleshooting, and are having strange circular reference problems with "pictures" and/or "usbdisk1" folders on your NAS, disable "PCast" and reformat your drive(s) again to fix this error.

 

Finally, two closing comments:

1. BUFFALO, shame on you for incorporating such a flimsy print server into so many of your products. This print server / utility barely supports Windows printing, which is without a doubt the most common method of printing in the technical world. We as consumers should not have to rely on private individuals to patch your shoddy software/hardware. However, now that someone has fixed the problem for you, how about you incorporate this fix in a firmware / software update for all your consumers that are suffering now, or soon will be?

2. Thank you, Alex Falkenberg / alexfalkenberg.com for providing a fix to my and likely so many other BUFFALO NAS users' printing problems.

 

My setup: NAS - BUFFALO LinkStation Live HS-DH500GL, firmware 2.11v101b (2.10 before this incident), USB Disk 1 - BUFFALO DriveStation HD-CE1.0TU2, USB printer - Canon imageCLASS D340

 

I hope this helps!!

[alexfalkenberg]

   Thanks for the kind words; very glad it worked for you. fwiw, I've had no printing problems at all since doing this. I have no doubts at all that tons of people are affected by it; I very strongly agree with the "shame on you, Buffalo" sentiment as well (as noted in my blog post).