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I am trying to print a 1-page Word document with text only from my Windows 10 laptop via wi-fi.

The print queue has been showing as follows for 10 minutesPrint queue

The printer itself is also showing a 'printing' message but not actually printing.

How can the print queue be stuck when the file size is so small and there is no error on the printer?

After ten minutes the item vanished from the print queue without printing and without any error message!

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Your printer is a host-based printer (PCL3). It does not understand text. Instead, it relies on the Windows graphics engine to convert the text into dots on the page.

These kind of printers rely critically on the correct driver. Make sure you are using the correct driver - a PCL5 or PCL6 driver is not compatible with PCL3.

If the driver is correct, I would start by reinstalling it. First delete the printer from Devices and Printers. Then, from Control Panel, remove all HP printer software. If there is nothing there, go back to Devices and Printers, and click on any other printer. A menu will appear at the top; click on Print Server Settings, then the Drivers tab and remove all instances of the printer from the list. Now reinstall from the CD. If you don't have the CD (or if it does not include Win10 drivers), you can get them from this HP site.

For wireless installation, follow the instructions on this page.

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  • I tried taking the document's content and pasting it into a new document as plain unformatted text. It then printed without error! I added some formatting back in and this also printed succesfully. It seems as if there are certain fonts and/or layout techniques in Word which defeat my printer driver?
    – EleventhDoctor
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 10:16
  • These things happen sometimes and it can be extremely hard to find the reason. Try changing some things in the original to see if you can discover what caused the problem.
    – hdhondt
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 11:05
  • Would you like to add some comments on this to your answer, so that I can accept it? For now, reformatting the document is sufficient!
    – EleventhDoctor
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 13:01
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    Maybe, since you solved it yourself, you should put in your own answer and accept it.
    – hdhondt
    Commented Mar 22, 2017 at 0:38
  • OK @hdhondt, 'tis done! Thank you for taking the time to interact with me on this issue.
    – EleventhDoctor
    Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 12:33
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Trial and Error

I could not quite believe this but this is the second time it's happened so it must be for real.

I copied the text from the document and pasted into another document, minus formatting - so just text.

The document printed fine.

I manually made some formatting edits so that the document resembled its predecessor.

The document printed fine.

Based on @hdhondt's reflections, I suspect that there is an inadequacy with the printer driver.

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