You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

printing - 'filter failed'

Installed Yosemite, printing stops working on my Canon iSensys LBP5360 (aka Canon Color Imagerunner outside Europe).


The print queue says "Stopped - 'filter' failed".


Worked fine yesterday on Mavericks.


Any ideas? Be gentle - I moved from Windows after 29 years last July...


Bill.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 5:26 AM

Reply
39 replies

Apr 2, 2015 5:24 AM in response to BillBrook

IS there a proper fix for this yet?


All i've seen so far is suggestions that the vendors "fix" their drivers, surely the OS should cater for things that worked previously, since yosemite my macbook is useless, slow and wont print. bluetooth is hopeless and the card reader still doesn't work unless you pull the card out slightly, not things i expect to find features of a 1200 GBP laptop.


If i hired an operator to work a machine and he suddenly said "i cant run that as of today so you need a new machine" then i'd sack him, much like i would with yosemite if there was an easy roll back option.


can someone offer a true fix not a fudge that lowers the security levels etc. or is apple in its infinite wisdom expecting everyone to sort themselves out? i came to apple expecting good quality products and applications along with decent support and so far i find its terrible. the resultant product resembles something built for children with less usable functionality.

Apr 2, 2015 5:38 AM in response to Ian_y

Ian_y, the "proper fix" is an updated printer driver from Canon (or whoever makes your printer). You may not like the answer, but in truth, any software vendor, including Apple has to make tough choices. In this case, so far as I understand it, the tough choice was to tighten security, and ensure that OS X remains largely free of the virus and security issues that plague Windows, or to continue supporting obsolete printer drivers, including their security vulnerabilities for ever more. The short term fix is listed earlier in this thread, which is to back off some of the security as a temporary measure.


Your comparison with a machine operator is not valid, unless you are letting thieves into the factory by the million every night to see if they can break it. Software is different.


Your comment about not lowering security levels misses the point - it is the printer drivers which have lower security levels, and the changes are to allow them to run in the higher environment that Yosemite defaults to. Apple, just like Microsoft, sit at the centre of an eco-system - they cannot dictate how Canon write their drivers, except by making changes of the exact nature you are complaining about which coerce compliance. And in fairness to Canon, their drivers were updated within weeks of the Yosemite release. If you don't wish to suffer these inconveniences, then do what most businesses do - wait 6 months or a year before upgrading to the next OS version.


I'm sorry you are finding the transition to OS X so disappointing - I made the transition last year after almost 30 years on Windows, and whilst there are a few niggles, generally everything just works. I spend FAR less time tearing my hair out trying to make the blinding obvious work properly - the system either works as expected, or it cannot be done. Not like Windows which promises so much, and delivers so unreliably. And I am hardly a child - I am a senior software architect working in telecoms with over 30 years experience. It isn't Windows. Get used to it.

Apr 2, 2015 12:00 PM in response to BillBrook

I take on board some of what you say, i've been around windows for many years, one of my first IT qualifications was an MCSE so yes, i am slightly biased. however i've spent a lot of time on unix based systems and the like so i'm not afraid of it as some are.


the things i fail to see the upgrade do, which windows would have done, is warn about certain elements 'pre upgrade" as part of its checks, for example "lower levels of memory may cause slow functionality as a result of yosemite being memory hungry like windows vista (remember those headaches!?)" and "print driver not recommended" being another.

The one thing windows always did was allowed you to run the OS on most anything remotely compatible, its issues mainly were a result of being too far stretched to have everything working perfectly as there were so many likely combinations of hardware it was going to run on. OSX however is the exact opposite, if you had an apple printer i expect it would have worked straight out of the back of the upgrade.


Forcing people to either use specific devices (their own!) or face issues has always been apples problem in the market, forcing you to have a technology ecosystem comprising purely of apple products with limited capability to interact with others, including their proprietary cables and connectors etc. along with OS.real techies don't wanna be told what to run the OS or their apps on, or what their machine should be built like, because they built it and its theirs.


when i saw they'd gone to intel i thought "hey its time to give them a try, they're not railroading people any more..." maybe there's some truth in that, but not as much as i hoped. still thought that £1200 at the time, for the spec, was a lot to ask but hey, with bootcamp there's hope if all else fails....


the OS is very reliable in most cases, when i'm in the office i don't ever get a call from the wife to ask what's wrong with the laptop or "how do i do this?" as its very simplistic and easy to use (hence my "children" comment) but as a techie of many years i still resort to a bootcamp windows 7 X64 to do anything other than surfing and reading mails, maybe one day i'll be convinced otherwise, i hope so as i'm not closed minded to change, i'm an architect so i'm quite the opposite!

Jul 6, 2016 5:47 PM in response to BillBrook

When I upgraded from 10.7 to El Capitan, neither my Canon ip4000 nor my Canon ip1000 worked any longer. I also got the "filter failed" error message. I followed everyone's suggestions, including JM. But no joy. Then I went to Gutenprint and downloaded their (free) driver suite. Fortunately in January 2016 they had just updated it to include Canon Bubblejet printers. Now I can print again.

printing - 'filter failed'

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.