Further to previous threads by me and another forum member describing this problem (here and here), which were erroneously marked as solved in my opinion, my problem with the Officejet 6700 Premium printer has been continuing despite trying many potential fixes from this and other forums.
I am using Windows XP SP3 with Office 2007 software and printing via an ethernet connection onto A4 paper. When using the auto-duplexer, the second side of each page prints with 'ghosted' black text. Images and coloured text are not affected, even if printing those in greyscale. The first side of each page is not affected. This doesn't occur when using single-sided print or when manually duplexing. For some reason, printing out in draft is worse than in normal mode.
The printer is using the latest firmware and driver.
Things I have tried that make no difference are:
- Changed fonts.
- Used notepad.
- Printed via USB.
- Used a different computer running Windows XP.
- Used a different computer running Windows 7.
- Changed margins.
- Disabled bidirectional support.
- Removed all unnecessary HP software.
- Changed the print processor data type to RAW [FF appended].
- Plugged the printer into a primary power socket rather than a multisocket.
- Another forum member had the same issue which persisted despite having the printer replaced.
Some of the unsatisfactory workarounds that have been suggested are:
- Manually duplex instead - this works, but is not why I bought this printer, which includes the auto-duplexer as standard. This was supposed to be an upgrade from our previous non-duplexing printer!
- Use another printer driver to operate this printer - I have tried both the Deskjet 6980 and Deskjet 990c drivers after seeing these recommended on this forum. However, although this prevents the ghosting issue it introduces new ones, such as headers and footers being chopped off pages and reduced features/options. I also suspect that the ink usage is less than optimum too (e.g. the 6980 driver won't use only black ink for greyscale printing - a waste of colour ink).
The fact that the ghosting disappears when using another driver would seem to indicate that it is the driver that is the issue and not the hardware. This issue has been going on for months and there are rumours that it is being worked on - can anyone verify if this is actually the case? Otherwise I will have to look elsewhere - the printer is not fit for purpose.
Another problem is that using the autoduplexer shrinks the output no matter what the margins are set to - apparently this ridiculous page shrinking is actually part of the design and can't be turned off or modified. This 'feature' it is not mentioned in the product details, technical specification or user manual, using the auto-duplexer, but apparently it shrinks the pages to about 90% to ensure that the duplexer can pick up the page after it has printed the first side of each page (even if the margins are set to 50 mm all around). I won't go into more detail here to avoid confusing what may be separate issues, although it occured to me that the two problems might be related - see here for the seperate thread on this issue.
