Greetings:

I tried searching the forum for this topic but found only one 10 year-old post which was no help.

My Dell 1710 USB laser printer works inconsistently. Sometimes it will print okay. Other times it spews out blank pages or pages with random characters across the top and the only way to stop it is to pull the paper tray (or shut it down). Occasionally after restart it will automatically print the page properly. This will happen whether I'm printing a LibreOffice doc or pdf file.

I'm using the "recommended" Generic PCL 6/PCL XL print driver. My attempts to find a better driver have so far been in vain.

Any advice?

Thanks.

There's a suggestion in this Ubuntu thread that the HP LaserJet 4 model driver is the best to use. BTW, I note that gutenprint, foomatic, and postscript drivers are available for the HP LaserJet 4 model. Good luck.

I think that that printer is actually a Lexmark OEMed under the Dell brand.

It's difficult to track down the manufacturers of Dell's OEM products, but I did find this: http://www.noah.org/wiki/Dell_1710_printing This article from Ubuntu might help: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ha...exmarkPrinters

Lexmarks historically do not work and play well with Linux, despite Lexmark's claims to the contrary.

The HP driver seems to work. Previously, I would get a long pause before printing. Now it prints quickly and with no problems - so far. If the HP driver starts giving me problems I'll try the Lexmark.

BTW, I just read that the Lexmark E330 driver works with the Dell 1710 on Apple OS X so that might be an alternative given that OS's similarity to UNIX.

Thanks very much for the responses.