Suddenly can't print; print crashes everything... kinda

Question

Suddenly can't print; print crashes everything... kinda

Hi all,

I'm on a PC network here at work and print to a few different devices; until today, I haven't had any significant issues.

Today, as soon as I hit "print" - from any program - I get a spinning beach ball. If I wait long enough, a print dialog opens up, but doesn't show any printers.

I have looked for com.apple.preference.printfax (etc) but cannot find it, though activity monitor shows it when I try to open the printer control panel.

By the way, print preference also hangs for a LONG time.

All in all, I cannot get print working, and any dialog related to it seems like it's running 100 times slower than it should be...

Any ideas what might be causing this?

thanks

Andrew

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Feb 11, 2016 9:36 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Feb 11, 2016 10:27 AM in response to The Blue Chunks

If you haven't done so already, try resetting the printing system.

OS X Mavericks: Reset the printing system
also Yosemite

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Answer 2

Feb 11, 2016 11:34 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric -

I couldn't even open the control panel very successfully; it literally took 10-15 minutes to open it and -try- to add a local printer. I wasn't successful in adding one.

However, I ran the pre- El Capitan system update, and that fixed it.

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Answer 3

Mar 4, 2016 8:32 AM in response to The Blue Chunks

Annnnnddd.... broken again.

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Mar 4, 2016 10:17 AM in response to The Blue Chunks

Try a restart.

Do a backup, using either Time Machine or a cloning program, to ensure files/data can be recovered. Two backups are better than one.

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up after waiting 10 seconds. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode - About

Safe Mode - Yosemite

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