Occasional missing lines when printing, or when making pdf

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It’s unclear to me in what category I should post this.45871-skipped
Suddenly, when I print particular things, especially articles in a Hebrew newspaper (haaretz),
Occasional lines are skipped (come out blank instead of the text that belongs). If I print again,
the missing line might be there but others might turn out blank. I thought it might have to do
with the printer, and for some reason I had better luck if I first “Print” to a pdf (using nitro pdf
creator), and print from the resulting file. Now, a few days later, I notice that a pdf of a long New
Yorker article comes out with blank spaces a few lines long (once or twice in a very long article),
As see the accompanying jpg. In the pdf case, horizontal thin lines mark the beginning and end of the
skipped area.
The two phenomena might be related, in which case maybe the first
has nothing to do with the printer.
I’m using Windows 7 64 bit, and a Brother laser printer I’ve had for years.
Any ideas?

PS — It seems to be happening more often. Also, in one case, half a line (before
a comma) was missing, instead of a whole line.

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Does it happen on another computer?
Have you updated the printer drivers recently?
Is the PC running at high CPU use for some reason?

cheers, Paul

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Does it happen on another computer?
Have you updated the printer drivers recently?
Is the PC running at high CPU use for some reason?

cheers, Paul

Paul, thanks.
I just tried the same things on our other win7 PC (this one 32bit), and
a) The same thing didn’t happen
b) Reproduced the phenomenon on the original PC and noticed that there wasn’t extreme
CPU usage (around 40% max).
c) I haven’t updated the printer drivers recently.
d) I think I’m mixing up two different phenomena. What I included a picture of
was from the New Yorker’s long endorsement of Hillary (at
go to http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/the-new-yorker-endorses-hillary-clinton ),
and I don’t have any kind of subscription or registration with them, so that’s probably
a way they have of slightly spoiling things for outsiders. That NYer problem DOES happen on the 2nd PC.
There are various ways their article pages behave differently (eg, no print icon, and the 3 dot icon
doesn’t lead to choices like print, but just takes me to the next article).
So, that’s it so far. Incidentally, it’s the same model printer on both PC’s, so maybe I should try
to switch them to see what happens.

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Weedhopper,
I’m not sure when I’ll have time to exchange the printers (which thankfully are the same model).
I’m in a whirl with various matters. I don’t know how to update the drivers (it’s been ages
since I did anything like that).
THE ONE CLUE so far: If I take an article that happens with, and first print it to pdf,
and then print from the pdf file, I have no problem. I can say that more definitively
now that I don’t confuse this problem with the New Yorker case (where the pdf’s do show
the problem).

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Reporting:
I’ve switched printers (same model), and I’ve also updated the printer drivers,
and, no cigar. The problem with the test article stays exactly as before.

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Update: I tried changing the drum on my Brother laser printer in desperation
(the fact that exchanging printers did no good guaranteed that this
would not work). No progress (of course). The problem must be in the PC somehow.
Incidentally, sometimes I get pages with lots of random letters missing.
[Again, this hasn’t happened when I print to pdf first]

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Incidentally, sometimes I get pages with lots of random letters missing.
[Again, this hasn’t happened when I print to pdf first]

That really does point to a printer driver issue, since you don’t have problems with ‘printing’ to PDF using a PDF ‘print driver’. That of itself also suggests a workaround – print to PDF and from there to paper. A long-term solution means getting a print driver for your printer that prints correctly. Uninstalling the existing driver, then reinsyalling it or, preferably, an updated driver might resolve the problem.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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That really does point to a printer driver issue, since you don’t have problems with ‘printing’ to PDF using a PDF ‘print driver’. That of itself also suggests a workaround – print to PDF and from there to paper. A long-term solution means getting a print driver for your printer that prints correctly. Uninstalling the existing driver, then reinsyalling it or, preferably, an updated driver might resolve the problem.

I did update the printer driver, by going to Brother and downloading and installing same,
but that didn’t help. I didn’t uninstall anything though.

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Before all else fails I try a different data cable, try a different port, pull the power and data cable from the printer, then try it all again.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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yerubal,

The picture you included in your OP doesn’t look like skipped lines – it looks like a blank overlay superimposed on the lines in question. Perhaps looking at it that way will help someone arrive at a solution.

Zig

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yerubal,

The picture you included in your OP doesn’t look like skipped lines – it looks like a blank overlay superimposed on the lines in question. Perhaps looking at it that way will help someone arrive at a solution.

Zig

Zig, you’re right about that.
But I didn’t discover that until post #3 in this thread (see there, at d),
and I’ve been aware of it since I corrected myself then.
The basic phenomenon, though, is missing lines at other sites.
To complicate things: At some pages they’re the same ones (reproducibly).
And sometimes I start getting pages with missing letters peppered
all over the text, usually at later pages.

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There’s good news.
First, let me mention another symptom that was turning up. Often, the headers and footers
(the tiny lines at the top of some doc pages that told the name of the article and maybe date,
and below with the URL of the article, often) would have many spaces inserted.
Now, I thought I’d try Weedhopper’s suggestion of using a restore point from before this started.
The first time I logged the phenomenon was 10-21, but I’m not sure when it started.
My guess was, a couple of days or so earlier maybe. I looked at the restore points.
There was one at 10-18, and I thought I’d try that (I have no memory for why there’s
a restore point on 10-18. I didn’t log anything, but I’m not dependable that way).
I’m not cool and calm and deliberate with this problem, because I’m rather upset
about it, and I neglected to scan for affected programs before I asked for a restore
to 10-18. Anyhow, IT WORKED! So far, it looks like the problem is fixed.
I assume I need to go for the MS update now (originally done on 10-28,
so that couldn’t have been the culprit).
I’m hoping I won’t be back here with this problem. I’d like to thanks everyone
who contributed his thoughts. I’ll look back at this thread to see if there have been
further comments. I wish I’d logged what happened on 10-18 originally,
assuming it was something, probably trivial seeming, that I was aware of.
Sigh.

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Thanks again, weedhopper. Doing system restores intentionally,
and being more meticulous about logging things
are both takes of mine here. And, what a relief.

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Bad news. The missing lines (etc.) phenomenon started again this evening.
What happened inbetween: I had done the MS update, to make up for my reverting
to the 10/18 restore point. That didn’t spoil things. Then I installed latest Flashplayer.
That was OK. Then I updated my Kaspersky Total Security from “2016” to “2017”.
Kaspersky later prompted me to update Firefox, Shockwave, and Picasa, which I did.
Later that day (today), I noticed the missing lines thing.
I completely uninstalled Shockwave and Picasa, but that didn’t fix things.
I wish I’d let a couple of days go by between each install, etc.
Disheartening.
(Edit: “Today” means 10/31. I just noticed that this post is dated 11/1,
2:10, while it’s actually 8:10pm here, Mountain Time.)

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a) Older restore points no longer appear as options (I can’t get to 10-18 again)
b) I notice that I do not have the printing problem in Firefox! That should have been
one of my first checks, in retrospect.
(I’d like to keep using Chrome generally, though, rather than Firefox.)

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Note: I’ve made other discoveries. Bottom line, it’s the version (54) of Chrome.
So I’m posting in the “other browsers” area. Once again, thanks to all, and apologies
(including to myself) for going nuts and getting impulsive and illogical several times
in the process.

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I’m glad that you have already solved this.

For future reference, here are a couple of things you can try if this happens again:

* File / Print / Advanced — make sure “Print as Image” is checked. Or, if it is already checked, uncheck it.

* Print the document, then scan it to PDF.

Macropod (#9) beat me to the most likely solution: print to PDF as the first step. Then print the resultant PDF document that was created by printing to PDF. By printing to PDF as the first step, you are cleaning the document, because Adobe recreates the document from the print job. I have used this trick to fix errors in very long documents.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Thanks mrjimphelps. The workaround you suggest that Macropod (#9) suggested
was already mentioned by me in post #5. The print as image idea is a new one.
For any newer info, see my later post in “Third Party Browsers”, where it appears
that an impending update of Chrome will solve the present problem. Meanwhile,
workarounds are good to have. Various businesses appear to have been impacted
by this Chrome bug, incidentally.

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