Problem with Mac Printing to Canon printer via Airport Express

[Shines]

Hi All,

I have 2 mac laptops at home, and a win 7 desktop. I have had a canon MF4550d laser printer multifunction at home and have always had it directly connected to the Win 7 machine via USB. I attempted and failed to be able to share the stupid printer adequately with the 2 mac machines. So when I heard the new Airport Express came out and that it got such good reviews for its stability, I looked into it and found out that it had a USB print server function built in (as did the old one but I didn't know that) so I thought I would give it a try to turn the printer into a network printer.

OK, finer details.
- Latest driver from Canon website - UFRII-v2.41 (2 days old)
- Printer connected via USB to the Airport.
- Printer shows as a nearby printer when adding the printer in sys pref
- Attempts to install automatically, but fails saying the driver isn't available from apple, and to get it directly from the manuf.
- Then add the printer manually using the 'select printer software' option.
- Scroll down the list and find the printer (Canon MF4500 Series - UK).
- The printer shows its 'options' - not much but like paper type etc.
- Printer adds all good.
- Shows a neat little icon for the printer, shows the status as ready, with a little green light.
- Send a print job, and you get either one of 2 errors:
1: Canon UFRII error - cannot communicate with the printer or the printer isn't supported. or
2: Error '-50'

Spent an hour on the phone with Apple who reset the printing system about 15 times, deleted the driver, reinstalled, etc. etc. etc.

Spoke to Canon who informed me of the lack of network capability of the printer. (really? the lack of an ethernet port wasn't a give-away?)

Have tried connecting the printer directly to the Mac via USB, and it worked initially, only to stop working when I started mucking with it.

Just to confuse things... the windows machine, although a little trickier to set up (had to manually choose everything, including drivers etc. and specifying the IP of the AP express) worked like a charm. The printer started printing instantly, and successfully.

Any ideas? I am thinking of returning the Airport Express. Not sure. Its a nice device and it works for the windows machine FFS! Fail Apple / Canon!

Thanks for taking the time to read / skim this!

Cheers,

-Scott

[beckyboo]

Not having any direct experience with setting up printers with an Airport Express, I can't offer anything more constructive than return the AE. There are plenty of other options, and some maybe actually cheaper.

[Renza]

Originally Posted by Shines

Just to confuse things... the windows machine, although a little trickier to set up (had to manually choose everything, including drivers etc. and specifying the IP of the AP express) worked like a charm. The printer started printing instantly, and successfully.

if you use the Bonjour printer utility on windows it will do all that automatically

Originally Posted by beckyboo

Not having any direct experience with setting up printers with an Airport Express, I can't offer anything more constructive than return the AE. There are plenty of other options, and some maybe actually cheaper.

There may be plenty of other options, but from my experience, they probably won't work as well due to how OS X handles drivers. Having the printer connected to the airport allows the use of drivers which are designed for direct USB connection.

You could try adding a network printer port manually like you had done on windows. Also try using a generic PCL6 driver and see if that works (or maybe PCL5 depending what the printer supports)

[beckyboo]

Originally Posted by Renza

There may be plenty of other options, but from my experience, they probably won't work as well due to how OS X handles drivers. Having the printer connected to the airport allows the use of drivers which are designed for direct USB connection.

I'm not trying to be imflammatory, but in the OP's experience it doesn't work at all.

[Shines]

Thanks for the replies guys, I have been out of town for a few days and havent been much able to fiddle with it.

I did borrow a D-Link print server from my employer to test it out, as it supported Appletalk etc. and the exact same result was found. Using this unit, I was able to find the printer with the windows machine straight away and print successfully, but this time the Mac machine was able to find the printer again (albeit with a little more effort), but same error and no printing. Bugger.

I am no closer to being able to print, but I will look into using another type of generic driver, but I am fairly certain that I tried all of the ones in the list.

Will report back.

Cheers,

-Scott

[tree86ers]

This problem is mainly to do with the drivers supplied but the printer manufacturer. Most would specify from memory if the printer can be supported on a print server (or specify airport express)

for the fact it wont work on the other dlink as well (Apple Talk will not work if your using 10.7 or later from memory) i would say it is a diver limitation canon. if it is an old printer it is very likely that it will not work with the supplied one

you can try your luck with CUPS drivers they might be able to get you working

resetting the printing system only removes the drives installed and allows them to be added fresh again
and if the printer is not on the supported list on the apple web site that would be another problem with canon not proving drivers for it.