If there has been one consistent, recurring problem over the years it has been printing.

Yesterday I went to print a document, but it never made it to the printer. I looked at the HP device manager and the file was in the queue, but with the notation that the printer had been "stopped." I checked the setup up with localhost:631 and everything appears to be correct. User name is in the lp group.
I then removed the current CUPS package and installed the one from Slackware64-13. Doing that solved an earlier problem with one of the newer version of CUPS. This time the document made it to the printer, but each line overlapped itself and the whole thing fit into the space of about 6 lines.
Just for chuckles I saved a copy of the document to the windows partition, booted over to XP, fired up OpenOffice for windows and the same document printed out perfectly.

Any suggestions as to what could be the problem?
Thanks.

What is the device model name? It sounds like a formatting issue, not a print system issue. This means you might have to install a different PPD file from the manufacturer's site if there is one available. I usually have to do this at work, because invariably there is at least one printer that doesn't have a proper driver built in.

My HP worked fine but I don't use the device manager. I never use KDE's stuff for that. I hear it's gotten better, but I still do my system administration the old fashioned way.

This is a driver issue and I think you simply need the right driver, PPD, etc. and the printer will work fine. Funny thing is, you can take a Windows only printer, that is one which only has a Windows driver available, and still connect the printer via to the Linux host, set up Samba, then send print jobs from the Windows system, through the Linux host, flawlessly to the printer. (how's that for a decent run-on sentence ;-) But the Linux system will be unable to print to that same printer. Which is why I hate proprietary drivers. Buying a post script printer is a worthy, long term solution to this. As long as a PPD is available, life is good.

This same printer has worked well for the last several years. It is a hpdeskjet 940c. It is not a 'windows only' printer and the correct ppd file has been installed.

Uncle! You got me and I can't trouble shoot this model because I don't have it. I went on http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-DeskJet_940C

Which has these links:
http://www.openprinting.org/driver/hplip
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html

It looks like a fully supported printer. It is reported to work "perfectly". What a drag. I'm sorry I couldn't offer you anything more meaningful.

One thing I had to do with a proprietary driver (Lexmark) in the past, is add missing symbolic links because libraries were upgraded and the proprietary driver had library versions hard coded in it. But you don't even have error messages to go off of.

Hopefully someone with that particular printer model has some ideas. I hate it when printing doesn't work too. We're pretty far into the computer age to still have issues like this.

It says it works perfectly, so it should work perfectly, it must not be configured right.

Make sure you have hplip installed, then use localhost:631 to configure it, then it should work without problems. So, the only thing to suggest is that you configure it again.

A few years ago I had a similar problem after update a printer waiting for nothing when sending a job to it. Then I went to http://localhost:631/printers/ , selecting the printer and had it in the pause setting. I clicked the dropdown to restart the printer and the problem was solved. Hopefully it will be just as easy for you too.

I have the same problem (HP Photosmart 7260).
I think this is a bug appeared when HPIJS was replaced by HPLIP (with UDEV support).

Most of the times the printer works fine but, suddenly, I send a print job and nothing happens; at this point, the ON/OFF button on the printer does not respond.
The only way to resolve this situation is to unplug and reattach the power cable of the printer.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, which were tried with both CUPS 1.4.3 and 1.4.4 (one at a time, of course ). However, they didn't work and I finally tried an older, known to work version, 1.3.11. It works very well. No problems. No fuss. No muss.

I had a problem with my HP LaserJet P1005 in Slack64 13.1. It's a "windows printer". In order to install foo2zjs (http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/) I had to unistall hplip and system-config-printer packages. Then I just had to create and configure the printer with cups. Working flawlessly!

Had a slow morning so I took the time to try it all over again with CUPS 1.4.4 and the problems persisted, so it was back to 1.3.11.
I have had to do a great deal of printing over the last several days and there was a point where, out of frustration I booted over to XP and printed from there. While there was no noticeable difference in quality, the HP printer drivers for windows are considerably faster than the Linux drivers. Just FYI.

Thank you very much! After working with my HP-1018 / foo2zjs on slackware 13.0 without any problems I have the same issue, that with 13.1 the printer won't work.

So I followed youd hints to remove new cups and system-config-orinter, installed cups 1.3.11 and voila! ...it runs perfectly!

You are welcome!