networked printer going crazy (HP p1505n networked printer)

I have posted about this printer before.  I was able to determine after a long spell that its firmware was corrupted.  I recieved a replacement on friday.  When I connected it, it worked fine, and then ran out of ink.  Some yahoo took it upon themselves to remove the ink cartridge and leave the printer on.  I came in and replaced the cartridge.  As soon as the printer initialized it began spitting out page after page of nonsense glyphs and characters.  Fortunately it didn't see fit to cover the entire page with this nonsense, only the first line or two per page.  These are the steps I took to try and fix it:

Attempted to clear the cache by shutting down unplugging (power and network cable) for 2 min then pluggin back in.

reinstalling the drivers (updated and most recent) on the server.

resetting the printer by holding down the "go" button while cycling on

checking the firmware version

restarting print spooler

plugging the printer directly into a machine and printing locally (which worked using USB)

strangely it acts this way even when the print spooler is shut off.

Ive seen several forums with similar issues but none of their fixes seemed to work.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Anyone seen this before?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Have you log into the printer webpage and see where the documents are comming from?  Another way is to use a packet capture like wireshark.

Printers are the most sensitive thing on the network, because all you need is it ip address to start using it(and all of it ports are normally open for attack).

I forgot to mention that I cancelled all print jobs.  Wireshark sounds like a good idea.  Ill give it a try.

Hello Cyber, clearing out the print jobs is the first step, the second step is trying to get rid of the wingdings that are printing.  In the past I've been able to get them to stop by clicking cancel on the printer.  You'll have to do this for all the print jobs that are stored in the printer's memory. 

Is clearing the print jobs different from cancelling all the print jobs?  I cancelled all the print jobs from the server.  I will attempt the other recommendation as well.

Yes, you are correct.  Clearing the print jobs is the same as cancelling the pring jobs.  I think your problem is the printer has some jobs in memory.  If you can clear the jobs out of the memory, you'll be back in business. 

glamontagne,

thanks for the suggestions.  I did do a hard reset, and unplugged the printer and cable for a couple min (i heard this was how you cleared the cache).  that did not work. 

thanks

Are you 100% certain that the server has all the print jobs for this printer cleared?  Usually clearing the jobs and then clearing the printer cache does the trick.  The last alternative would be to let it finish printing.  I wish I could be of more help.

Are you absolutely certain that all PCs are using the server queue to send jobs to the printer?  It has a full print server built into it (all HP with the "n" at the end of the model number have an HP Jet Direct in them somwhere) - all that a PC needs to send a print job to it is its IP address.  So its possible that other devices may be printing to it that aren't going through the server.  So maybe you should log into the print server andsee if you can configure it to only accept pinrt jobs from Active Directory or a specific server.

Glamontagne,

                       I am certain i cleared all the print jobs.  I did it from the server and then went around to each machine individually just to make sure.  Finally I went and stopped the print spooler and then went and cleared the spool files, from the server and then from each machine.  That seemed to work I waited around to make sure the printer wasnt going to act up and even printed test pages from various terminals.  This worked..until today.  About 30 min ago I recieved word that the printer was acting up again.  Doing what it was doing before.  I am officially at my wits end.  I am hoping this recent development will shed more light on what is going on.  Thanks for your responses.

Cyber, this definitely sounds like a driver issue.  When a printer prints out wing dings it means that it isn't reading the file you are trying to print correctly.  I know you said that you updated your printer driver to the latest, but sometimes the latest isn't the best.   

Glamontagne,

                   You may be right.  I updated at the time believing (as told by hp support) that it was a firmware issue.  I will roll back to the stock drivers and see what happens.  Shipley.  I am certain all print jobs are going throught the server.  Theoretically shouldnt it be playing havoc with any one of the other printers as well if this wasn't the case?  I checked to make sure at your suggestion...wanna cover all the bases.  Recent update though, the printer stopped printing "windings" and now won't print at all.  Everytime I try now I just get a error printing bubble.  Thanks again guys.