Epson printer keeps pausing

[wryta]

I have an Epson Stylus Photo R290 (I'm in NZ - elsewhere, I think this is the R280 or R285), about three years old. It has performed fine... up until now.

I recently installed a new hard drive (I'm on an iMac, running Leopard), and everything worked fine until I set about fixing permissions on my user identity.

Now, my printer prints its test pages fine, but as soon as I try to print anything at all from any program (including Epson's own Easy Print program), the printer immediately pauses, and refuses to resume. The error message that flashes up briefly between "resume" and "pause" is this...


can't open `/private/var/spool/cups/tmp/4c0c36c5d579f'.

Any help would be appreciated - it's driving me nuts!

 

[wryta]

I should have mentioned I have restarted, reconnected and rebooted everything in every possible order, and reloaded all operating systems and drivers. It may be I wasn't holding my tongue right, or I missed a permutation/combination of the above, or Venus wasn't in alignment with Neptune. Hey, I would even appreciate it if someone could tell me they were having the same problem!

 

[jackson]

I don't have a Mac, so can help little.
Do the various folders shown in the path have the correct permissions to open them.
I expect that the problem is more a Mac than a Printer problem and a Mac forum might be better.

 

[Leonardjohn]

I have several Macs.

If I have a problem with the cups/tmp file, I just delete the printer then add the printer back again.

Do not reinstall software, just go to your system preferences, select printer & fax, highlight printer and click the - minus sign.

Then click the + plus sign to add.

This has worked for me.

Good luck
LJH

 

[wryta]

Nope - no change.

I have a feeling it may be permissions relating to the cups/tmp file - but I have no idea where to find the folder or directory these files are kept in. Nothing related to cups, spool or anything shows up in finder. Any clues?

Cheers.

 

[websnail]

I'm not a mac head so I can't provide expert help on this or even know if this is possible...

Sometimes though spooler errors in Windows are caused by heavily fragmented drive space where there's little or no large fragments of HD space... So try defragging the hard drive to see if that helps

There's also instances where the spooler location has security permissions or is full of rubbish that needs to be purged... If you have some means of moving the location, resetting perms, etc... then I'd definitely look to do that.

Beyond that, there's a few Mac heads on edugeek.net so if you post up the problem in the appropriate mac forum, chances are someone will be able to help.

 

[wryta]

Thanks for the suggestions, websnail...

I've got about 400GB of unused HD, so that can't be an issue.

I think you're right about the spooler location permissions - but I can't find the location anywhere, dammit!

It's probably time to call Jobs. I'm sure I've got my red iPhone here somewhere...