The Weather Forecasting Forum

Hi gang:

I know I've posted this before, but I think I've possibly uncovered a new "glitch" or bug with DAWS. When I last posted to yous about this, I said that when I attempted to plot any upper level chart, it would print out a totally black image. Since then, I've tried using other printers, and the same thing happened. But now I've recently took notice that it will only print an all black image for anything above 500mb level. Below that, no problem!

So when I need upper level charts, I use the older version of DA. Perhaps this is something Tim could look into. I don't know of anyone else who experiences this problem, but I know I do.

Randy

Hi Randy,

I thought I would check out your concern regarding printing upper level charts, I have just tried printing 300mb Balanced Height Field, with streamlines and this has printed perfectly. I am using Daws Ver (i) with Windows 98 and a hewlett Packard HP Deskjet 895 colour printer. I cant say I know why you are having a problem.

Hope you sort it out soon.

Randy,
I hate to keep giving the bad news as far as duplication is concerned, but like Peter, I just printer a nice chart out perfectly - 250mb plot and geopotential heights. 00Z Sunday June 20 chart.
version i, Windows XP, Canon 860i
When you say anything above 500mb, you DO mean in elevation (ie 250mb), not in numbers (850mb), right?

Wally:

Yes, elevation. Well I feel really "embarrased" about this since it seems you all can print with no problems! You must think I'm just making this up or something, but I'm not. I don't know why it does this, because all other print jobs are fine.

Maybe none else will have this problem, but I am at wits end with it!

Sorry, just alittle peeved right now.....

RG

Well, yes, I can imagine that it would be quite frustrating.
Tell us more about your computer. The problem is likely in it. How much memory, windows?, HD space (free), have you run programs like Ad-Aware to "clean" out spyware? virus scans, etc.? Any suspicious programs running (when you look at things using Program Manager)?

Wally:

My computer is a Compaq Persario Pentium III with 128 meg of ram. I have about 1.3 gig left on my hard drive. I used to use adware but now use spy-bot search and distroy advanced version. For viruses I use PC cillion. I have no suspicious programs running on my machine that I can see or am aware of.

How can the problem be my computer? It's fine and works great!

Randy

To add to what Wally has reported. I have an XP computer connected to a HP LaserJet and have no problems printing out upper air maps.

The print driver is the Achilles heel of the problem.

(1) What type of printer is it?

(2) Go to Start > Settings > Printers > (your_printer) > right-click Properties > Version Information. What does it say here?

(3) Are you able to get the map to print if you play around with some of the File > Print Setup settings? You would look for things that might simplify the printing process, such as printing portrait instead of landscape mode, or printing at the lowest resolution possible, to see what happens.

I notice that white colors tend to go to the printer as a sort of faint gray shade, so it's possible the driver might be mapping this to black & white, in which case it would be helpful to change the print driver color setting to remove anything that might cause it to interpret the image as black & white.

Tim

Hi Tim:

My printer is an Epson Stylus C60 printer. Under version information, it says 5.22/A. I have not really attempted tweaking anything since Wally said it was a problem with my computer. But I will tweak the settings and see what happens.

Sometime ago, when I bought this computer, I was told that windows XP does not support printer drivers from Epson, which could explain why the ink level function does not work either. Go figure

I will keep you informed about what happens when I tweak the printer settings Tim.

Thanks,
Randy

I should have been more specific ... my guess is that it is probably in the computer setup of not only the printer driver, but other drivers sometimes get in the way. I'm stunned that Epson doesn't support Windows XP. Perhaps just some functions like ink levels aren't supported.

Looking under Device Manager (My Computer-right click), are there any conflicts/problems: or "flags" - those yellow exclamation points?

Nobody is suggesting this particularly, but I bet if you reformatted your drive, and reinstalled everything, it would cure it, at least until any offending item was also reinstalled, but it would only be a chance that the problem would reoccur. If reformatting didn't help, then it would really seem to be strictly hardware related.

Gosh, I'm not a deep tech - somebody out there has to be.