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Lexmark wireless printing

Has anyone had any success with printing wirelessly to Lexmark printers after the upgrade to Snow Leopard? I have a X4550 printer and I am having no joy. The driver for the 3500-4500 series is included as part of 10.6 but CUPS is reporting the following error:

"Backend /usr/libexec/cups/backend/lexnet3 does not exist!"

The port that it is set up to print to is prefixed lexnet3://x.x.x.x:1

Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 29, 2009 6:06 PM

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Posted on Aug 29, 2009 10:07 PM

It sounds like part of the software wasn't installed. Have you tried downloading the driver from Lexmark and reinstalling?
24 replies

Aug 31, 2009 8:34 AM in response to inforr

For me, installing the drivers from the Lexmark site restored my wireless printing but then I wasn't able to scan (I would get the message "the software for this printer was installed incorrectly. Please reinstall"). Reinstalling resulted in no change.

Also, every time I tried to print wirelessly the printer would be paused and I'd have to open the print & fax preferences and un-pause it to get it to print.

For now I'm just going to live with using the USB cable... unless of course anyone has any more ideas.

Thanks.

Aug 31, 2009 8:50 AM in response to inforr

I have been able to get my Lexmark X7675 to print wirelessly with Snow Leopard, every time.

I have both a Brother MFC-9440CN (Ethernet) and the Lexmark X7675 (WiFi), and in both cases in SL it's clear you are better served NOT installing the manufacturer's software at all, but rather use the capabilities built into SL. Of course, I installed both manufacturer's packages first, so the first few steps here were to ensure I "undid" that step:

1. From the SL DVD, optional installs, install ALL the printer drivers for all brands. You can be more selective if you like, but it's not that much space for less future headache. Find the Lexmark utilities on your Mac, and delete them. Find Lexmark pref files under user/library/preferences and /library/preferences and delete them.

2. Open System Preferences: Print and Fax. Delete the Lexmark printer there if there is one. Then right click in printing list and select "Reset Printing System"

3. Go to your Lexmark printer, and use its menu system to determine its IP address. On the X7675, it was printed out in a settings page.

4. With this information in hand, return to System Preferences: Print and Fax. Add a printer. Protocol = LPD. Address = the IP for your wireless Lexmark. Name = what you want to call it. Under Print Using, "Select Printer Software" and find your printer name from the list. Add the printer.

5. Believe it or not, open your browser. Enter this URL: http://localhost:631 Select "Printers" from the top menu bar. In the new page, click on the name of the printer you've just added. In the second drop-down list which now says "Administration" select "Modify Printers" and enter an Admin username/password when prompted.

6. Select "LPD/LPR Host or Printer" and then enter lexnet3://ip.address:1/ where ip.address is the IP you've already identified for your printer. If it's 10.0.1.14, this should read lexnet3://10.0.1.14:1/

7. Save. Go to /Library/Printers/Lexmark/PDEs folder and delete the entire PDEs folder.

8. Open up Software Update. It may find a "new" Lexmark driver package. Install it.

9. You should be good to go. Print a test page from your computer. Tip: in SL, when you've sent a job to the printer and its icon opens in the dock, I like to right click/options/"keep in dock" for future easy access.

Aug 31, 2009 1:19 PM in response to inforr

Information on Lexmark site about Snow Leopard:

http://support.lexmark.com/index?page=content&id=OS12&locale=EN&userlocale=EN_US

Specifically:

"USB connected printers are fully supported by the drivers included on the Mac OS X 10.6 install DVD. For wireless printers you will need to download new drivers from www.lexmark.com"

Note that lexmark.com only has install packages for Leopard. So, it appears a Snow Leopard-specific drop of Lexmark software for wireless functionality is in the works.

Aug 31, 2009 1:58 PM in response to adamsfbay

How did you manage to change "lpd://ip.address" into "lexnet3://ip.address:1" with SL? In CUPS after selecting LPD/LPR Host or Printer a new screen is presented to enter the printer connection. The examples presented here show the possibles formats, none of them being "lexnet3://ip.addres". OK, I fill in "lexnet3://ip.address:1" anyway and push the Continue button. The next screen lets me change the printer description. Again push the Continue button to enter the last screen, which lets me push the Modify Printer button, which presents the error message "lextnet3 is not a valid URI". Any suggestions? In Leopard the "lexnet3" prefix was accepted

Sep 1, 2009 10:11 AM in response to p_styx

I'm using a Lexmark X4850 and had the same problem of "lexnet3://ip.address:1" not working. After a lot of fiddling around and going through the CUPS help, I found that the following works (or seems to):

Instead of selecting LPD/LPR Host or Printer, I selected AppSocket/HP JetDirect, then the address I entered was: "socket://ip.address"; after that, the rest was straightforward and that got the printer working.

Of course, the scanner doesn't work over wifi so I have to break out the usb cable for that.

Lexmark wireless printing

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