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Sometimes when printing PDFs on my Windows XP with an HP photosmart 2410 printer the text becomes gibberish. It's kind of hard to describe, so I've scanned in an affected page below:
pdf page (not very good scan quality, I don't think my scanner was quite working right and the page was faded to begin with)
EDIT: Here is the original: http://www.nlcbsa.org/files/d/usr/16/Medora%20Itinerary%202012.pdf

There is no consistency in when it happens.
EDIT: It seems to only happen when printing multiple copies. Sometimes it will start out like that, other times it will switch halfway through, and more often nothing happens.

EDIT #2: Figured out what the "gibberish" is. The binary code for each changed character is exactly one more than the code for the proper character (i.e. 0x20 (space) becomes 0x21 (exclamation point) ). Now to figure out why that happens...

(using Adobe Reader X)

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  • 1
    I think you've answered your own question. I think your scaaner is *****
    – Xavierjazz
    May 11, 2012 at 21:14
  • @Xavierjazz it didn't scan in very well, but the page itself was already kinda like that (I need to replace my print cartridge)
    – Nate Koppenhaver
    May 11, 2012 at 21:15
  • Is everything shifted up by one or is the one bit stuck?
    – afrazier
    Jun 25, 2012 at 23:07
  • @afrazier everything is shifted up by one (numbercode = numbercode + 1)
    – Nate Koppenhaver
    Jun 26, 2012 at 1:56
  • Could you post one of the files which prints wrongly? I've seen this problem before on a hardcopy but didn't have the original file to play with.
    – Hugh Allen
    Jul 30, 2012 at 10:42

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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+50

Have you tried Print as Image (Print dialog -> Advanced)? If the problem still occurred, it would indicate that it was on the PC side not the printer side. If it did not occur it would prove nothing, but at least you would have a workaround.

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  • Accepted, printing as image seems to work
    – Nate Koppenhaver
    Aug 2, 2012 at 21:16
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Could you try installing the lastest drivers for your printer and update your PDF reader? It seems either your PDF reader or the printer driver did not process the fonts in the PDF correctly. You may want to try another PDF reader and see if it prints correctly.

If none of these work, you can try converting your PDF to vector graphics and print that instead. Printer cannot do font substituon on graphics, so it should just print what you see on the screen. The easiest way to achieve this is to install a free PDF printer software like PDF Creator and print your PDF to that.

If the file generated by the PDF printer is already gibberish, then it's definitely your PDF reader's fault.

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  • Updating everything seems to have worked
    – Nate Koppenhaver
    May 13, 2012 at 15:42
  • never mind, it just started doing it again.
    – Nate Koppenhaver
    Jun 11, 2012 at 19:58

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