Erratic tray selection with the HP4100

Thanks to all the suggestions for the LJ4100, it is performing very well
- including printing about 4000 pages since the 'low toner' warning came
up (and still going so far).

Seems like the HP duplex bug has been fixed, I can rotate the back page
at will.

I am having one bit of bother though. All settings seem to work fine in
the print dialogue, except for the paper feed selection.

If I leave it on 'auto', and have plain white paper in both trays (2 and
3) it'll print from 2, and run into 3 if 2 runs out. Fine. But, if I try
and add coloured paper to either tray, it baulks at using it, and will
force printing to the other tray. After much mucking about, it would
only print from one tray, regardless of the setting in the panel.

Now I did finally, somehow, get it printing from tray 1 (the flip down
tray), although setting any other tray would not work.

I think the problem was with the coloured paper I was using, as it was
jamming a lot when it did print from tray 2 (duplex printing). It did
print Ok when it fed from tray 1 though.

I am pretty sure this is a problem with the HP printer software being
***, as it just wouldn't remember any settings - I tried saving them,
but got different settings applied each time I ran it.

What I needed to do was print the first page off onto coloured paper
(making a cover page for a booklet), and then the rest on white paper
(making the body of the booklet). The software sets up to do this, but
just flatly refuses to actually work.

The annoying thing is, I got a couple of proofs printed off yesterday,
and they accepted the settings, and printed correctly. Now it won't.

I ended up printing the cover page separately - by filling all the trays
with coloured paper, and then refilling with white and printing the
body. This has worked OK so far.

The only answer I can think of is that the 4100 can somehow sense the
paper in the tray, and won't use it if it's sub-standard.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.mac.com/andrewhewitt1/>
.