This printer was working perfectly before. (HP D4160 Deskjet). Now, from time to time, it will stop in the middle of a print job with the paper already fed somewhat through the printer, the power button blinking on and off. If I hit the power button once, it will spit the paper out of the printer. However, if I hit it another time, nothing happens, it is still flashing and won't print another job. I have to unplug it from the power and plug it back in, then try again. I get the following in my /var/log/messages when this happens:
Nothing seems to be in the error log for cups indicating a problem (I have it set to debug log level).
This printer worked perfectly before, I'm not sure what changed.
This is on an ubuntu machine with 2.6.17-10-386 kernel.

I'm having similar problems with the same printer on PCLinuxOS. My HP D4160 hasn't stopped in the middle of a print job but it does what you described in between print jobs. Maybe I haven't printed enough to see all of its failure modes yet.

What I have done so far is to use the CUPS web interface by pointing a browser at http://localhost:631. I select the administrator option, then I log on as root to the web interface. Then I look at the print jobs. I stop the print jobs and then restart them. If that doesn't work then I delete any pending print jobs, then I go to the printer section and stop the printer and then start the printer. All of this is done in the CUPS web interface.

I don't have a real answer. I thought that you might like to know that this problem is also on another distro. I'm using PCLinuxOS with the HP printer. I haven't checked SuSE.

Mine does what you are describing as well. It is a known issue. What I do is turn the printer off and then on in between print jobs. I only send one print job at a time to the printer, so it doesn't start another one.

However, the problem I described above happens often, but not always.

I got home tonight and unplugged the usb from the computer and put it in the other port. I also unplugged it from the printer and plugged it back in. So far I've printed a few documents and they have all come out. Keep my fingers crossed I guess.