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Indigent · Feb 12, 2002, 12:58 PM

I am having a problem with Laserwriter yaking on me. It is giving up immediately with a "Laserwriter 8 internal error -170". I have trashed the prefs, but no joy. Nothing listed on Apple Knowledgebase. And no joy when booting with "MACOS 9.1 only" either. Machine is a titanium, MACOS 9.1, printer is an HP 4100. Any ideas?

Thanks, Bill

-Q- · Feb 12, 2002, 02:14 PM

Originally posted by Indigent:
<STRONG>I am having a problem with Laserwriter yaking on me. It is giving up immediately with a "Laserwriter 8 internal error -170". I have trashed the prefs, but no joy. Nothing listed on Apple Knowledgebase. And no joy when booting with "MACOS 9.1 only" either. Machine is a titanium, MACOS 9.1, printer is an HP 4100. Any ideas?</STRONG>

OS 9 should have the latest LaserWriter drivers, but I want to make sure. What version do you have installed?

Also, have you tried/reinstalled HPs drivers here?

Indigent · Feb 12, 2002, 06:36 PM

Thanks...
Yeah, been there, done that. Keep getting "laserwriter 8 internal error -170". I can print to epson printers fine, but they are using a different print driver. Just wish I could find what the error code meant. Gigs of disk space, and plenty of RAM. Nothing unusual installed, just the ususual offenders like MS office, Illustrator, photoshop. Happens in all applications. Everything else works, so I hate to reinstall the OS. Sigh...

Bill

Rainy Day · Feb 14, 2002, 05:54 PM

It could be a hardware error and not a driver error. Are all your displays/indicator LED's normal? If not, i should think it's a hardware error.

Might try poking around this site for more clues. Also, do a Sherlock web search with your error code and printer model (that's how i found out about my LaserWriter error a few years back).

Might also try poking around the Hardware Info area of this site.

Good luck.

Cipher13 · Feb 19, 2002, 02:52 AM

LaserWriter, or LaserJet?

You're mixing up terms, and I dunno if you're perhaps trying to remedy the problem the wrong way...

I've got extensive experience with LaserJet 4050's (almost identical to the 4100, I assume), and problems with them are usually cured by reinstalling the drivers that came with the printer, or downloaded drivers, and resetting the printer itself. Not just an on/off reset, but resetting it to the factory defaults, which you can do through its menu and screen on the printer itself...

Indigent · Feb 19, 2002, 09:48 PM

Yeah it was confusing, Laserwriter 8 was bombing when talking to our LaserJet 4100. It bombed on our 4050 and 4000 in another office. BUT....

Tonight, Joy at last! I tracked it down to a corrupt Colorsync prefs file. I guess Laserwriter 8 uses Colorsync to determine grayscaling(?). I did a clean install of 9.1 and that worked! Printed to the HP4100 like a champ. So then began swapping files from "system folder" to "previous system folder" till it worked. Wish I started at "Prefs" first rather than working thru controls, extensions, etc.

Thanks, for the ideas.
Bill

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>LaserWriter, or LaserJet?

You're mixing up terms, and I dunno if you're perhaps trying to remedy the problem the wrong way...

I've got extensive experience with LaserJet 4050's (almost identical to the 4100, I assume), and problems with them are usually cured by reinstalling the drivers that came with the printer, or downloaded drivers, and resetting the printer itself. Not just an on/off reset, but resetting it to the factory defaults, which you can do through its menu and screen on the printer itself...</STRONG>