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Printer troubleshooting for AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express

coldreset — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:58:00 +0000

Do you have a USB printer that works the way you expect it to when connected to your computer, but not when it’s connected to your AirPort base station for printer sharing? In that situation, this article helps you troubleshoot issues with printer recognition or sending a print job.

Before you start, remember that base station printer sharing is for printing only, not for printer utilities or other special features that may require a direct, proprietary connection.

Exactly what you need to do varies slightly between AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express. We’ll note the differences.

AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express: Can’t use USB printer utilities while printer sharing
You can use USB printer utilities when the printer is directly connected to a computer, not when the printer is connected to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme Base Station or AirPort Express.

Tip: The Mac OS X Installer includes several third-party USB printer utilities. You can read about them here.

Base station printer sharing works with:

AirPort Extreme Base Station
AirPort Express
Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later (AirPort Extreme)
Mac OS X 10.2.7 or later (AirPort Express)
Note: We encourage the Mac OS X 10.2.8 Update for all 10.2 users. The versions listed here are simply the minimum required.When you need to use a USB printer utility, you should temporarily connect the printer to a USB port on a Mac OS X computer.

Turn off and unplug

For AirPort Express:

Unplug AirPort Express, and turn off the printer.
Disconnect the USB cable from the AirPort Express.
Plug in AirPort Express, and turn on the printer.
After AirPort Express finishes starting up, reconnect the USB cable from the printer.

For AirPort Extreme:

Unplug the AirPort Extreme Base Station, and turn off the printer.
Be sure the USB cable from the printer is connected to the AirPort Extreme.
Turn on the printer.
Plug in the base station.

Check for software updates

Be sure that you have the most recent Mac OS X software updates and the latest firmware for your AirPort product.

Check printer recognition in the AirPort Admin Utility or AirPort Utility

Open the AirPort Admin Utility or AirPort Utility, located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
Select your base station, and click Configure.
Locate the Summary page. For AirPort Admin Utility version 3, you’re already there (it’s the default page). For AAU version 4, included with AirPort Express: From the View menu, choose Summary. For the AirPort Utility, select the desired base station and press command-L or select Manual Setup from the Base Station menu.
Once you’re looking at the Summary view, check to see if it recognizes your connected printer.

Check your printer driver

Check the version of the printer driver that’s installed on your computer.
Look at the support website for the printer manufacturer to see if their latest driver is newer than what you have.
If it’s newer, download and install it.

Delete and recreate the printer queue

Open Printer Setup Utility (10.3) or Print Center (10.2).
Delete any queues for the printer model you have.
Add a new queue, and choose Bonjour (formerly “Rendezvous”). It should locate and show the printer attached to the base station.

Testing your setup

Your printer should now appear in Printer Setup Utility or Print Center. Open the TextEdit application, type a short sentence, and then try to print that do*****ent.

from apple computer

Mac OS X 10.4: Can't print to a printer shared by Microsoft Windows

coldreset — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:38:11 +0000

When you try to print from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to a printer being shared by Windows, the do*****ent might not print, and the print queue window may display one of the following messages after a minute or more:

Connection failed with error NT_STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_NAME
Connection failed with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_TYPE_NOT_GRANTED
Connection failed with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
Connection failed with error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL

The message may also be preceded by an “Unable to connect to SAMBA host, will retry in 60 seconds…ERROR” message. You can increase the size of the printer queue window to see the full message, if desired.

This can happen if:

The printer’s shared name contains a space or special character (see below).
The name of the computer sharing the printer contains a space or special character.
The Windows user’s name or user’s password contains a space or special character.

What’s a “special character?” It’s a typed character other than A-Z, 0-9, !, $, *, (, ), _, +, -, ‘ . .

The following are not special characters and are OK to use in the printer name, Windows computer name, Windows user name, and Windows user password:

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 . ! $ * ( ) _ + – ‘

As a workaround, remove all spaces or special characters from the computer’s name, printer’s name, Windows user’s name, and password, then add the printer again in Mac OS X. You can consult the Help do*****entation built into Windows to learn how to change any of these names or a password.

Mac OS X: Cannot locate a shared Windows printer

In Mac OS X 10.3 and later, Printer Setup Utility allows you to add a printer that’s being shared by a Microsoft Windows PC. However, Printer Setup Utility may not see some shared Windows printers. Here are some reasons why and what you can do about it.

The printer name contains more than 12 characters

Only printer share names that contain 12 characters or less will be displayed in Printer Setup Utility when browsing for a Windows printer. If you need to use a printer with a longer share name, either shorten the share name on the computer that’s sharing the printer, or add the printer manually using the steps at the end of this article.

Incorrect Windows username or password when adding a Windows printer

Printer Setup Utility will prompt you for a username and password when adding a shared Windows printer. These fields can be left blank if the computer sharing the printer is set up to allow guest users to see and print to the shared printer.

If the computer that’s sharing the printer is set up so that only specific users can see the printer, the printer list will be blank if the wrong user (or no user) is entered. Contact the administrator of the computer sharing the printer to determine what username and password to use. Please note that the steps in “How to manually add a Windows shared printer,” below, will not work if you are not using a correct username and password.

The computer sharing the printer is on a different subnet

Printers shared by Windows PCs that are on a different subnet than your Mac will not be listed. You can manually add printers shared by a Windows computer on another subnet using the steps below. Be sure to use the computer’s IP address—not the computer’s workgroup and name when adding the printer manually.

The shared printer’s comment contains special characters

If one of the shared Windows printers has a Return character (which isn’t displayed) at the end of its comment (description), any printers that should appear after it will not be displayed.

To resolve this, go to the computer that’s sharing the printer and remove any Return characters (or other special characters) from the printer’s comment. Please note that the steps provided in “How to manually add a Windows shared printer,” below, will not work until you remove these characters.

Tip: Printer Setup Utility lists available printers alphabetically, but Windows may not list the printer order in the same way. This means that the printer with the special character in its comment may not be the last printer listed in Windows, as it’s listed in Printer Setup Utility.

How to manually add a Windows shared printer

Open Printer Setup Utility (located in /Applications/Utilities).
Mac OS X 10.4.x users: Choose Add Printer from the Printers menu, then hold the Option key while clicking the “More Printers” button.
Mac OS X 10.3.x users: Hold the Option key down while choosing Add Printer from the Printers menu.
Choose Advanced from the first pop-up menu.
Choose Windows Printer via SAMBA from the Device pop-up menu.
In the Device Name field, type the name you would like to use for this printer in Mac OS X.
In the Device URI field, use one of the following formats to link to the printer:smb://user:password@workgroup/server/sharename
smb://user:password@server/sharename
smb://workgroup/server/sharename
smb://server/sharename

Notes: “user” is the name of a Windows user who has privileges to use the printer. “password” is the password of that Windows user. “workgroup” is the name of the Windows workgroup to which the computer sharing the printer belongs. “server” is the name of the computer sharing the printer or its IP address. “sharename” is the shared Windows printer’s share name.

Tip: You don’t need a “workgroup” when specifying the IP address of the computer (such as when the printer is on a different subnet), or if your Mac belongs to the same Windows (SMB) workgroup.
Choose the appropriate PPD or printer driver from the Printer Model pop-up menu.
Click Add.

Hard drive Crash Data recovery

coldreset — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:19:21 +0000

Data Recovery Services provides recovery service on a full range of hard drives and operating systems including IDE, EIDE, SATA and SCSI hard drive assemblies drive data recovery services all makes and models of laptops and notebooks.maxtor hard drive data recovery, hard drive failure data recovery,crashed hard drive data recovery,external hard drive data recovery,laptop hard drive data recovery,computer hard drive data recovery,drive data recovery services,Personal computers drive data recovery services, workstations drive data recovery services, laptops drive data recovery services, PDA’s and even digital cameras that store data on hard drives, removable magnetic media or flash RAM cards, all suffer from the same failures, some of which are:
• Unable to boot
• Virus attacks
• Inaccessible drives or partitions
• Unable to run or load data
• Data corrupted
• Hard drive failure
• Hard drive crashes
• Fire and water damage
• Surface contamination and damage
• Accidental deletion of data

Logical damage is primarily caused by power outages that prevent file system structures from being completely written to the storage medium, but problems with hardware (especially RAID controllers) and drivers, as well as system crashes, can have the same effect. The result is that the file system is left in an inconsistent state. This can cause a variety of problems, such as strange behavior (e.g., infinitely recursing directories, drives reporting negative amounts of free space), system crashes, or an actual loss of data. Various programs exist to correct these inconsistencies, and most operating systems come with at least a rudimentary repair tool for their native file systems. Linux, for instance, comes with the fsck utility, Mac OS X has Disk Utility and Microsoft Windows provides chkdsk. Third-party utilities such as The Coroners Toolkit and The Sleuth Kit are also available, and some can produce superior results by recovering data even when the disk cannot be recognized by the operating system’s repair utility. Utilities such as TestDisk can be useful for reconstruction corrupted partition tables.

Two main techniques are used by these repair programs. The first, consistency checking, involves scanning the logical structure of the disk and checking to make sure that it is consistent with its specification. For instance, in most file systems, a directory must have at least two entries: a dot (.) entry that points to itself, and a dot-dot (..) entry that points to its parent. A file system repair program can read each directory and make sure that these entries exist and point to the correct directories. If they do not, an error message can be printed and the problem corrected. Both chkdsk and fsck work in this fashion. This strategy suffers from two major problems. First, if the file system is sufficiently damaged, the consistency check can fail completely. In this case, the repair program may crash trying to deal with the mangled input, or it may not recognize the drive as having a valid file system at all. The second issue that arises is the disregard for data files. If chkdsk finds a data file to be out of place or unexplainable, it may delete the file without asking. This is done so that the operating system may run smoother, but the files deleted are often important user files which cannot be replaced. Similar issues arise when using system restore disks (often provided with proprietary systems like Dell and Compaq), which restore the operating system by removing the previous installation. This problem can often be avoided by installing the operating system on a separate partition from your user data.

The second technique for file system repair is to assume very little about the state of the file system to be analyzed, and using any hints that any undamaged file system structures might provide, rebuild the file system from scratch. This strategy involves scanning the entire drive and making note of all file system structures and possible file boundaries, then trying to match what was located to the specifications of a working file system. Some third-party programs use this technique, which is notably slower than consistency checking. It can, however, recover data even when the logical structures are almost completely destroyed. This technique generally does not repair the underlying file system, but merely allows for data to be extracted from it to another storage device.

While most logical damage can be either repaired or worked around using these two techniques, data recovery software can never guarantee that no data loss will occur. For instance, in the FAT file system, when two files claim to share the same allocation unit (”cross-linked”), data loss for one of the files is essentially guaranteed.

The increased use of journaling file systems, such as NTFS 5.0, ext3, and XFS, is likely to reduce the incidence of logical damage. These file systems can always be “rolled back” to a consistent state, which means that the only data likely to be lost is what was in the drive’s cache at the time of the system failure. However, regular system maintenance should still include the use of a consistency checker. This can protect both against bugs in the file system software and latent incompatibilities in the design of the storage hardware. One such incompatibility is the result of the disk controller reporting that file system structures have been saved to the disk when it has not actually occurred. This can often occur if the drive stores data in its write cache, then claims it has been written to the disk. If power is lost, and this data contains file system structures, the file system may be left in an inconsistent state such that the journal itself is damaged or incomplete. One solution to this problem is to use hardware that does not report data as written until it actually is written. Another is using disk controllers equipped with a battery backup so that the waiting data can be written when power is restored. Finally, the entire system can be equipped with a battery backup (see UPS) that may make it possible to keep the system on in such situations, or at least to give enough time to shut down properly.

Some kinds of logical damage can be mistakenly attributed to physical damage. For instance, when a hard drive’s read/write head begins to click, most end-users will associate this with internal physical damage. This is not always the case, however. Often, either the firmware on the platters or the controller card will instead need to be rebuilt. Once the firmware on either of these two devices is restored, the drive will be back in shape and the data accessible