Between one and two weeks ago I started having issues printing. I am using Windows 7/ 64 and wireless printing to an Epson WF-3540. All worked fine before. I would hit print and all the pages print without connectivity issues or errors.
Then, only a page, maybe up to 11 pages for a big document, would print before I got an error that said “Error-sent to printer” on my printer status window. Printer itself- zero error message, it would just stop printing and go to the main menu on the display as though nothing was wrong.
I uninstalled/reinstalled drivers for the printer. Restarted printer, restarted wireless router, rebooted computer, nothing helped. I called Epson tech support. Printer checked out, wireless connection is great, nothing wrong there. They suggested it could be firewall-related. A-HA! New updates to Avast! may have caused issue.
So I called Avast! tech support. Talked to a nice man and we reviewed mostly my computer’s stuff, reliability report, extra firewall (redundancy, they interfere with each other, yada yada), temp files, slow computer, whatever. Then he tries to sell me on talking to Microsoft support for a 1-year unlimited support contract for $179. Nope, not going there. I still think it’s Avast! updated version doing something weird, based on forum posts here.
I poked around in Avast! Interface. Guess what I found? In the Firewall Menu, I went to the lower right to Firewall Logs. I selected to show Log for “Rules” and saw that Avast! Firewall was automatically changing my firewall protection from my home/low-risk mode to the medium/high risk mode when I was printing. Bazinga! Printer gets bumped, errors out, stops printing. Nice.
Went to Firewall Menu, selected Settings in the lower right, and saw that the Firewall was set up to Auto-select. I changed that setting to “Ask” for both Home/Low Risk and Public/High Risk. Tried printing again using a 50 page range (I’m a grad student, this is my thesis we’re talking about here, so I need to print. Badly). Sure I got a popup, but guess what, my whole glorious 50 page print job printed without a darn hitch.
I may fiddle around with the settings a bit more to see if I can get away from using a popup for everything I do, but I am glad to say that there is a workaround, and it didn’t cost me $179 to find out that Microsoft wasn’t the issue here.