LinkStation HS-DH500GL Print Server Broken

[Fran_D]

   

I seem to be reigniting an old problem, but I can not get the print server to come back to life after almost a year of flawless duty.  I have followed each of the suggestions in http://forums.buffalotech.com/buffalo/board/message?board.id=SolvedStorageThreads&message.id=1670&query.id=37920#M1670">http://forums.buffalotech.com/buffalo/board/message?board.id=SolvedStorageThreads&message.id=1670&query.id=37920#M1670, but nothing ever gets to the printer.  The print job shows up in my spooler queue, but the printer acts like nothing is there.  It's a Brother HL-5040, and works just fine when directly connected to the USB of my PC.  I've even gone back to FW v2.10, thinking that a recent upgrade cranked, but the server still remains dead.

 

Has anyone ever come up with a definitive solution to this problem?

[JoshC]

There is never a definitive solution, in the world of NAS products!  It seems from alot of the solved threads from previous post that you should perform a force firmware update.  There is problems if the printer is multifuctional.

Message Edited by JoshC on 08-10-2009 07:30 AM

[Fran_D]

   Well, I've done forced firmware updates for 2.10 and 2.11. No change. The printer is not multifunctional and I do have bidirectional communications turned off. As I mentioned, this thing has been working flawlessly with this printer until about a week or two ago. Nothing in my network changed. It just decided to stop functioning. The print server seems to be such a simple app, why would it just die?

[Amplituty]

   Same problem here. It started a year ago: I was using then the old firmware.... i don`t remember the version anymore... It just stopped working. I didn`t change any settings. Showed that the document is in queue but nothing happened. When i connected the printer directly to my computer everything worked just fine. The solution to that problen was then firmware update to version 2.11. Everything worked fine until it stopped to work again about 6 months ago. Now I`m having the same problem with no solution. Can anyone help???

[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/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">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).

[Fran_D]

   

Unfortunately, I won't be able to take advantage of this fix.  I suffered a hard drive failure with the Linkstation a few months ago, which rendered the whole system unusable.  These failures also seem endemic with the Linkstation.