Printer Drivers Disappeared

Hi Clarke!

What type of printer do you have?
When was the last time it functioned?
Have you had an problems with the Mac, like KPs or crashes?
Have you done any installs, updates or upgrades?

Navigate to:
HD > Users > Library > Your Home > Printers: What is in here?

ali b

Hi Clarke,

While printing in X has improved over the years it is nothing as solid as it was in os 9 (my opinion but it sure seems that printing in 9 was easier).

You have the printers in your home folder but they don't appear in your setup utility. Is that correct? If so it indicates problems with your system that are not just limited to printing but there is my favorite fixit tool to try.

Download Printer Setup Repair from

http://fixamac.net/software/index.html

and run it's repair programs. Specifically the System User Verification and Repair, the permissions (all of them), and within Cups tools the cups.conf file (replace it with a new one).

While this does not fix all printing problems it is a good start.

ali.... the navigation path is incorrect.. it shoud be....
/Users/(user name)/Library/Printers ..not ...

HD > Users > Library > Your Home > Printers:

george

Hi George!

OOPS!

Right you are! Thanks!

Correct: HD > Users > Your Home > Library > Printers:

Sorry Clarke!

ali b

Good point George and it raises another question. Are the printer profiles where they are supposed to be?

Clarke,

If you go to HD/Library/Printers

do you find your printer there and how about the ppd's which should be in the HD/Library/Printers/ppd's/Contents/Resources/en.lproj ?

Within the same parent folder of Printers but under the Manufacturers folders, do you find your printers?

Why this has happened is not clear.

Somehow the links to libraries and ppd's have been lost or broken. I just left a thread where the login links were lost or corrupte and the user couldn't get to his desktop.

It happens.

Usually a reinstall using archive and install will fix it but of course it requires that your user files are all backed up. To play it safe I'd clone your current system and archive and install to it.

If you want to keep hacking away at this, I'll stick with you.

Did you ever try Printer Setup Repair?

Hi Clarke!

There is a Epson Photo Stylus 750 driver, for Macintosh OS X (v10.1.0 - 10.1.2).
You could try that one, but it may not work.

Printer Driver v1.1aS

I had a Lexmark X73 All-In-One unit, that worked fine with both OS 9 & OS X, until I upgraded to 10.3.5. Then it just would not function any more.

Good Luck!

ali b

Reloading can be a scary concept until you consider the alternative which is to not be able to use your system at all. I believe that your system has links/files that are corrupted/broken that have taken down your ability to print. It seems that everything is there but just not connected which makes me wonder what else is wrong.

As to reinstalling it is a no brainer if you are backed up. EVERYONE should have a cloned system as a minimal back up. Consider that your main hard drive will fail sooner or later and will leave you with few alternatives.

You can back up your user files to cd/dvd which is good but still leaves you with days of reloading and re installing systems and applications if your hard drive fails.

The best way to keep going without a hitch is to have a hard drive with a clone or two on it. You can test solutions to problems on a clone. If it does not work then trash the clone and reclone. You can start your mac off a clone if your main drive fails and keep working. If you have never had a drive fail or an upgrade that trashes your system then you don't see the benefits of cloning/backing up. The day a serious problem occurs then you will realize what I am talking about.

If I was suggesting that you archive and install without any back up then, yes, it would be scary. If you are fully backed up then there is no risk. The only way that I know of to be Fully backed up is to clone. It requires an external hard drive for a laptop but you should have one anyway. I believe that your ppd exists but is not where I told you to look.

Click on the desktop and do a "command f" to bring up the find/sherlock window. You are going to look for CUPS but first have to expand the search to look for invisible files (use the + sign in blue) and add the visibility is....

Put CUPS into the file name field and with visibility set to invisible you are ready to search. You should get a lising of files that have cups and are invisible. One has the parent folder of Share. Double click on that folder.

You are going to look to the following path:

/share/CUPS/model/C/the model of the printers that you are looking for.

In your case it will be escp2-750.ppd.gz (which stands for Epson Stylus Color Printer). If you find it then your library has the printer description but the connection to it has been corrupted. The question is now what else is messed up and waiting to take down your system to the point that it cannot be used.

I would get the backup drive big enough for 2 clones of your hard drive, partition it in half. Clone twice and practice on the clone. If you trash the clone you still have 2 copies of your system. You can always trash a clone, reclone, and work on it till you get it right. If my suspicions are correct, some future update of your system will make it unusable because of what has brought you to the Apple forums in the first place. You are sitting on a ticking data bomb. At this point you have a chance to fully prevent any loss of data and use of your computer.

Hi Clarke,

I noticed the following problem that you describe as well. I had problems installing a HP Color LaserJet 3600, but was unable to install the printer (no printers disappearing though). It is not an Epson thing, then. Also, I doubt that the system is cracked somwhere. What we need to get is that the printer set-up program recognizes the newly installed printers. Would be interested to hear about your progress.
Nils

Quote from Clarke:
"Furthermore: I've run the printer set-up program and it first indicates that it is "search for new drivers". That goes on for a few minutes until "new printer drivers detected" and "would you like to reload the browser?" I click OK but nothing happens.

And I tried to download a new driver from the Epson site and got one. Went through the installation process ("successfully" it says), yet there is nothing I can find."