Dell 3330DN Laser Printer Problems

[watercooled]

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!

[abaxas]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/s...r-201103223650

[peterb]

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.

[peterb]

Just found this on the Money Saving Expert (!!!) forums

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)

[watercooled]

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!

[watercooled]

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).

[Flibb]

Have a look at the print spooler settings, might have the option to render the entire document before printing.

[watercooled]

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.

[Flibb]

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.

[watercooled]

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.

[watercooled]

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.

[Flibb]

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.

[watercooled]

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.

[abaxas]

Maybe the dell >3years fuse has blown?

[watercooled]

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.

[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?