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Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
So I got this printer a couple of years ago with that cashback offer but I've only just started using it, and it's been really temperamental.
E.g. it comes with 4 different drivers, plain, XL, XPS and PS, with no real indication of which is a good default choice. So after discovering the XPS driver is unbelievably slow (wait about 30 to get the first page, then printer pauses for about 10s before the next page, and so on), I tried the XL driver which was next on the list. Also much slower than my other Canon printer but a bit of an improvement. Lastly, I tried the 'plain' driver which seems OK speed-wise. I thought the PostScript driver probably wasn't an ideal choice for general use, though I could be wrong about that.
However...
It keeps crashing something. When I print I'll often get the error message "print driver host for 32bit applications has stopped working", and then I can't print again until I reboot my PC. So I'm starting to think there's probably a reason I got the printer so cheaply, but it's been so bad it's almost unusable. Oh and I've tried both the CD drivers and the latest ones downloaded from the Dell website.
I seem to remember reading that the printer is basically a re-branded Lexmark and that it might even be possible to use the Lexmark drivers? I don't suppose anyone has any experience with issues like this?
Thanks!
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
On the basis that you want something slightly more helpful....
Ive had a quick Google and the reviews of the printer are surprisingly good, given your comments.So it does make me wonder if there is another issue at play. I assume you are using it as a network printer, rather than USB, so could it be a network issue? Have you tried it with the USB drivers, and if so, is it any faster?
I haven't seen anything to suggest it is a re-badged Lexmark (although it woukdnt surprise me) but I would expect Dell to be marketing the same basic drivers that Lexmark provide.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Just found this on the Money Saving Expert (!!!) forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by Money Saving Expert
I used a different printer driver. I have a Dell 3330DN (the problem isn't just limited to USB connections). As this is a rebadged Lexmark I uninstalled the Dell drivers and installed the Lexmark universal driver.
I realise that this doesn't really help you though as you probably don't have that option.
However another thing that worked for short periods was instead of clicking on a document to open it in Word or printing directly after writing it was to open Word without selecting a document and then using the open option in Word to load the document
So might be worth trying the Lexmark universal driver.
http://support.lexmark.com/index?doc...erlocale=EN_US
(There might be a UK english version)
Im assuming you are running it on a Win machine/. I have a Lexmark printer which works well on Mac, Linux (using CUPS) and Windows. (7)
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Yeah I'm using it as a networked printer but I did try USB and had exactly the same issues unfortunately. I'll give those drivers ago and see if they're any better. Thanks!
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
OK just tried the Lexmark drivers, and after manually pointing them at my printer's IP address I did get it to print, but they don't seem any better than the Dell ones in terms of speed. I just printed a web page I had open in Chrome for example, and it was one page...pause...next page...pause... and so on, and by pausing I mean the printer was going quiet and just flashing its LED for a while before starting again with the next page.
It seems to be pages with graphics it really struggles with (though I've not printed enough to be certain of that), but my older Canon LBP6650dn has never had any similar problems. At the moment I'm just glad I never gave it away before trying this one.
Maybe there's some setting which needs changing on the printer itself but I've not changed anything from defaults and I even updated the firmware. Speaking of which, if anyone is considering doing the same, do it over USB and not LAN as the LAN way doesn't seem to work (printer hangs and upgrade never completes).
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Have a look at the print spooler settings, might have the option to render the entire document before printing.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Would that be on the printer or the driver?
Also, I've just found this post on the Dell forums: http://en.community.dell.com/support...528/t/19433534 so I'll give the Dell Open Print Driver a go too.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Its in the driver, right click and select printer properties, then have a look through the settings, especially advanced. I have a different dell (1320CN) thats networked, I think its also a lexmark.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Would it be this setting?
x Spool print documents so program finished printing faster
Start printing after last page is spooled
x Start printing immediately
Print directly to the printer
x indicates current settings.
Edit: That OPD driver doesn't seem to help much either, and on top of that prints are very faded and the headers/footers are largely cut off.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
OK so just factory-reset the printer, got the CD and went through the installation as plainly as possible, all I did was untick things like the toner alert, pdf manual, etc, but everything else default and it installed the XL driver. Tested by printing a web page and again, horribly slow. It seems like it's the printer processor being really slow as the printer will spin up when I press print, then spend so long blinking its LED that it actually spins down again before printing the first page, then spin up and print, then pause, etc. It just doesn't seem logical that what was intended as a high-performance office printer could be performing so badly. But annoyingly the warranty has now expired on the printer so I can't open a ticket with Dell about it to see if they have any suggestions.
So from what I can gather, the non-XL (presumably PCL 5) driver is the only one able to achieve reasonable print speeds, which seems strange considering it's not the default one. And as far as I can tell I'm not doing anything unusual with settings that would cause this to happen, and it happens the same printing from two PCs.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
With the drivers its just try things and see if they improve things. Most lasers will take a while to come out of standby, the pause between pages is odd. Are there more up to date drivers on the website? Might be worth removing the ones from the CD and installing the most up to date driver from scratch. Last resort would be to see if you can increase the printers memory cheaply.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Yeah I've tried both the CD and latest downloaded drivers and there doesn't seem to be any difference WRT the issues I'm having.
With the speed, it's not just waking out of sleep as some stuff e.g. notepad text will print really quickly from standby, and with good ppm. But with graphics on certain drivers it will spin up (make the usual laser printer motor/fan noises), sit there for a while, then actually spin back down again (still with BUSY on the LCD and the LED flashing), then spin up and print a page, etc.
In terms of speed, the non-XL drivers i.e. PCL5 AFAICT seem much better in this regard, but that still leaves the intermittent crashing issue.
See, if this was some random cheap printer I'd blame it on that, but it's not - it started at something like £500 and it's intended as a fairly high-volume office printer (7000 page standard toner, 14000 page high capacity toner) so I just don't get why I'm having so many issues with it. I'm even getting a lot of banding/patchiness with images. I could put that down to the new cartridge, or maybe that it's a couple of years old, but on the latter point I've had toner older than that still working like-new.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Maybe the dell >3years fuse has blown?
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
I guess so!
Without meaning to repeat myself, I'm just motivated to fix it as it surely shouldn't be happening on such an 'expensive' printer aimed at moderately heavy business use. I know I'd be wary of getting another Dell (and by extension Lexmark) printer after this experience - I've had two rock solid Canon lasers, and a Samsung colour laser with none of these issues. I'm not one to turn my back on brands because of the odd fault as any brand can have faults, provided they're not statistically much higher than other brands. But this doesn't seem like a fault per se, it's not like anything is broken hardware-wise AFAICT. At least part of the issue seems to lie with the drivers which have had plenty of time to mature.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
When I run into issues like these that are unusual to the printer I put my laptop on and test to rule out local equipment, you got a laptop to try instead of the main PC?
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
FWIW I had a bad experience with a Kyocera colour printer aimed at office/medium duty use. It didn't seem particularly robust and had a problem soon after purchase that was fixed on site. It was OK for a couple of years, then became more unreliable. And that was bought on the basis I had previously owned a Kyocera monochrome laser that was solid, heavy and just kept on going.
On the other hand I have a Brother monochrome MFC that has been very good, and not too expensive, either to buy or run, and I also have a Lexmark for the occasional colour job. Cheap to buy, but consumables are expensive. It seems reasonably well made, but only gets very light duty use, and I think cost around £100.
On the basis of this (ridiculously small sample!), I'm not sure that it is worth spending a lot of money on an expensive printer for home use unless it has a set of features you can't do without, or it gets a lot of use. Better to buy something cheaper and be prepared to replace it if/when it fails. The other option for the heavy home/home office user is to lease with an inclusive maintenance contract, which then becomes a business expense that you factor in to to your overheads.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GoNz0
When I run into issues like these that are unusual to the printer I put my laptop on and test to rule out local equipment, you got a laptop to try instead of the main PC?
I definitely tried over USB with the CD drivers but it's worth a go with the updates ones I guess. I have tried with two computers over LAN though with no improvement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
FWIW I had a bad experience with a Kyocera colour printer aimed at office/medium duty use. It didn't seem particularly robust and had a problem soon after purchase that was fixed on site. It was OK for a couple of years, then became more unreliable. And that was bought on the basis I had previously owned a Kyocera monochrome laser that was solid, heavy and just kept on going.
On the other hand I have a Brother monochrome MFC that has been very good, and not too expensive, either to buy or run, and I also have a Lexmark for the occasional colour job. Cheap to buy, but consumables are expensive. It seems reasonably well made, but only gets very light duty use, and I think cost around £100.
On the basis of this (ridiculously small sample!), I'm not sure that it is worth spending a lot of money on an expensive printer for home use unless it has a set of features you can't do without, or it gets a lot of use. Better to buy something cheaper and be prepared to replace it if/when it fails. The other option for the heavy home/home office user is to lease with an inclusive maintenance contract, which then becomes a business expense that you factor in to to your overheads.
Yeah like I say I wouldn't normally avoid a brand because of a fault because of the insignificance of it statistically. I had a string of bad luck with Kingston - a fairly new USB drive just bricked, two CF cards (one then its RMA replacement) were corrupting photos and some RAM I bought caused BSODs and failed memtest, but unless there's good reason to believe there's something statistically wrong with the brand I wouldn't avoid them in future.
It just seems more like design/programming flaws rather than manufacturing faults with this printer, which I admit does seem strange and PEBKAC is definitely a possibility.
With regard to price I got the printer for <£100 as it was on sale anyway, and then there was a cashback deal on top of that. In fact I was actually looking for toner for my Canon printer and that showed up as cheaper than the replacament toner, plus the toner in this Dell printer is AFAIK a full one with a higher capacity than the Canon cartridges!
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Just a quick thread revival since I know you're all itching to know how it's going!
I'm *this* close to binning the thing. I was hoping I'd at least make it through the supplied toner, but despite upgrading my PC and moving to Windows 10 it's exactly the same; default driver is painfully slow and the non-XL driver I manually installed crashes constantly, needing a reboot to fix. I don't think they've actually bothered updating the drivers at all though. I guess I got what I paid for in this case (basically free)!
Might just bite the bullet and get a replacement toner cartridge for my old 6650dn (which is still getting driver updates from Canon!) which was rock solid.
And the Dell seems to keep randomly spitting toner powder out. And it smells really strongly when it prints. And it's big. And it takes ages to boot.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
I think we had the 3330 at work and it seemed to work fine.although a new replacement imaging unit had banding a couple of times. Print speed was okay.
If the driver is still on the server I will look to see which one it is. If I remember that is, I have the memory of a sieve.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Oh that might be worth a look, thanks!
This is the one I'm using: http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/...3330dn/drivers (the one under Drivers for OS Deployment called Dell_3330_ACI_Admin.exe)
It contains three drivers, a 'plain' one, an XL one (default) and another one (PostScript if memory serves me correctly). The default XL one is slow, so I chose the 'plain' one which does work seemingly OK, but like I say crashes frequently, regardless of what PC I try it on.
As I think I mentioned earlier in the thread I've tried different driver versions and even Lexmark drivers and none work correctly so far for various reasons.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
I've been using the latest version of the 'Open print driver' for a while now and it seems more reliable so far. It lacks a few features from the control panel and tends to cut off headers/footers (I might need to adjust the margins somehow), but it at least works.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
I have just remembered about this while at the work and I took a look at the server.... My colleague has deleted it.
You may already know of it but check out ftp.dell.com if there is anything dell you want it is there... usually.
http://downloads.dell.com/published/...ll-3330dn.html
It has current and past firmware and drivers.
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Re: Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems
Yeah the latest one there is the one I was using unfortunately. The open ones I switched to are a bit better but I think I'll just use up the toner and give the printer away.