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Samsung Printer GripesThe ML-2250 is a Black/White laser printer |
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May 10, 2005. The HP 1320 is in the same class as the Samsung ML-2250. The HP is much better looking. It is also smaller, while the Samsung ML2250 extends very far in the back, the HP 1320 is a square. The 1320 is also quieter and starts printing faster. It can also print on both sides of the page which the ML-2250 can not.
January 19, 2007. On a Windows XP machine, the printer was uninstalled months
ago. Despite that, files from its driver showed up as not being digitally signed
in the Windows Signature Verification Utility. Turns out the printer uninstall
left a lot behind. Such as folder
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\samsungml_22500e2e
There were also some files in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 folder (these were the ones the utility objected to).
March 10, 2006. I installed the printer on a Windows XP Pro machine.
The GDI printer driver is not digitally signed.
Installing the GDI driver resulted in a C:\Windows\Samsung folder of 26 MB. Seems like a lot for just a single printer driver.
The samsung.com web site stinks:
September 1, 2005. A new Windows XP computer needs to print to this printer over a network. I run the PCL printer driver .EXE file on the computer and it finishes in a second. Now what? It doesn't say. I run the New Printer Wizard and when it lists the Samsung printers that it knows about, the 2250 is not in the list. Where did the driver go? I found it in folder C:\Windows\Samsung\ML-2250series_PCL6. No documentation at all. This printer continues to disappoint.
July 28, 2005. It suffered another internal error, this time while printing a
12 page Acrobat PDF file with graphics at 1200 dpi. The exact error was:
INTERNAL ERROR - FALSE
POSITION: 0x806ce8 (8416488)
SYSTEM : H6FW/xl_image
LINE : 482
VERSION : QPDL 1.26 05-06-2004
July 3, 2005. When I printed something, the printer was out of paper. After adding paper, instead of printing the document, the printer suffered an Internal Error. The position was 0xa433 (42035), the system was H6FW/xl_image, the line was 482 and the version was QPDL 1.26 05-06-2004. Ugh.
June 27, 2005. My first paper jam. After clearing the paper jam, it went to its old habit of rapidly spitting out pages with just a couple garbage characters on them. The cancel button on the printer does not cancel the printing. I'm really screwed. At this point, I have to suggest not buying this printer.
I tried the online Samsung Dr. Printer. It has a link for toubleshooting help. The web page was not found. When you fill in a tech support request with Samsung, they ask what printer you have. The ML2250 is not one of the choices. This is my last Samsung printer.
Eventually I turned it on and immediately hit the cancel button a hundred times. That seemed to do the trick. The printer printed a couple pages with information about itself.
June 26, 2005. The printer got all fouled up again. In the middle of printing a web page it stopped. There was no paper jam and there was paper in the printer. I turned it off, waited a minute and turned it back on again. Then it started spewing out pages very quickly each with a few garbage characters printed on it. I turned off the printer and left it off for a couple hours. When I next turned it on, it again started spewing out pages very quickly, each with only a few garbage characters on the first line. This also happened a couple weeks ago.
April 15, 2005. The C:\WINDOWS\Samsung\ML-2250 directory is 45.5 megabytes.
April 13, 2005. I printed 3 pages of a 7 page web page. Only the first page printed. A few minutes later the printer printed an error page that said
Internal Error - Incomplete Session by time out
POSITION : 0x73e83 (474755)
SYSTEM : H6FW/os_hook
LINE : 1257
VERSION : QPDL 1.26 05-06-2004
March 8, 2005. The printer is connected to a hardware print server which is sometimes unplugged. Needless to say printing while the print server is unplugged does not work. However, after plugging it in, the next print job always seems to result in blank pages. Today, the next two print jobs resulted in blank pages before the printer printed normally.
March 4, 2005. After turning on the printer and letting it warm up, the first document it printed consisted of nothing but blank pages.
February 20, 2005. There is no printed manual for the printer. The Quick Install Guide/diagram is 99% pictures, very few words.
The On/Off switch is at the back right corner. You can't tell from the
picture above, but the printer is very deep, there is another section in the
back that extends about six inches further. The switch is on the right side of
this extension. It can be hard to reach and means that the printer can't be
installed next to a wall on the right side.
I tried to read the User Guide before installing the printer. If you want to do
this, do it by browsing the CD manually. I used the self-starting application
that kicks off when the CD is inserted into the computer. It warns you of danger
because the printer is not yet connected. Only after getting through this
warning, are you given the option to read the manual.
There are no instructions as to which side of the toner cartridge is up and which side is down. Not in the Quick Install Guide, not in the User Guide and not on the cartridge itself. The side with the shiny green cylinder goes down.
To set up the toner cartridge you are told to take it out of the black plastic covering and then to shake it. Why not shake it when it is still covered? Seems more logical to me, less chance of making a mess.
To load the paper you pull the paper tray out from the bottom of the printer. Nothing tells you that it comes all the way out. I thought the printer was broken. Maybe it is?
The User Guide says to turn off the printer and the computer before connecting the printer using the USB connection. It is not necessary to do this as USB allows for hot plugging.
When you first turn on the printer, before connecting it to the computer, it can print a demo page. When I did this, it printed a blank page. The second time I tried it, it worked fine.
When installing the printer software you are warned that your computer needs 300 MB of free hard disk space. This seems like a bit much for printer driver. In my case, the C disk had 1.15 free GB before installing the printer driver and 1.03 free GB afterwards - meaning the printer driver used about 128 MB of disk space.
You can opt to install a few programs along with the printer driver. I opted for only the printer driver, nothing else. Despite this, the software copied files for the status monitor and the remote control panel to my hard disk.
Installing the printer driver on a Windows XP machine created a 54 MB Samsung directory under C:\WINDOWS. This directory includes an 8.6 MB copy of Adobe Acrobat, and an old copy at that - it was dated April 2001.
The application that you use to install the printer driver is not written in grammatically correct English.
The User Guide says that you must use a USB 2.0 cable which is not true. The sample printer page says that it is compatible with USB 1.1. I plugged it into a USB 1.1 port and it printed just fine.
When other printers print a sample or demo page it includes useful information such as details on the driver files or the total number of pages printed by the printer. This printer has no useful information on its sample/demo pages.
February 23, 2005. I tried to install the printer without the software CD that is comes with. The User Guide refers to two drivers, the Samsung Proprietary Printer Driver and the PostScript driver. The download page for this printer however has three drivers to chose from. None is the Samsung Proprietary driver, instead there is a PCL driver and a GDI driver.
I tried to ask Samsung about this. This web page sends them an email message. However, the list of printers that you can ask about does not include the ML-2250. I said instead that I was asking about a 2150. My exact question was:
I wanted to install the driver for a ML-2250 printer manually. I need to do this because it is connected to a print server and your driver install software does not detect it. This web page has three different Windows printer drivers for the ML-2250. Can you please explain the difference between them.
March 10, 2005. No response from Samsung. I entered the same question again and this time got a reply in a few hours. However, the response, full of bad English and incorrect spelling, did not answer the question:
There is 3 drivers for that printer. Postscript / PCL/ GDI. If you are using a printserver from another company you will need to contact them for support with connecting your machine. We may assist you if you are using a Samsung Nic card or connecting Your machine with either parallel or usb connection. By using a 3rd parts printserver there are settings that need to be made that we are unfirmiliar with. Hope this helps you.. Thanks
I asked the question a third time and, this time, left out the part about the Print Server. . .
February 22, 2005. Windows 2000 SP4. I bought this printer to replace an older one that had been connected to my LAN using a Netgear Print Server and a parallel (printer) port. The User Guide says nothing about installing the printer in this manner.
The printer driver installation application did not detect the printer as being connected and turned on when it was connected to the Print Server. I told it to install the printer anyway, and it did, and defined it as being connected to LPT1, the printer/parallel port on the computer. It was happily set up as the default printer, but since it is not connected to the computer directly, it could not print.
I tried to change the port in the printer definition to the port used by the Print Server, but Windows would not allow this.
Then I went to the existing definition of the network printer and changed the driver, from the old one used for the old printer to the Samsung ML-2250 Series driver. That worked.
October 19, 2005. A reader of this page wrote about problems setting up the ML-2250N which is the model above this printer - it comes with its own Ethernet port and can be plugged directly into a hub/switch/router. He said there wasn't a quick start guide to get networking setup and suggested reading FAQ - How do I setup my network printer which links to this PDF file Network Setup
August 28,
2005. NewEgg sold this printer for $170 with $14 shipping
August 29, 2006. NewEgg sold this printer for $140 with free
shipping.
Before installing the printer driver in Windows XP and Me, take a manual Restore Point.
The User Guide says to allow four inches on both the left and right side of the printer for ventilation.
Like many printers, the ML-2250 does not include cables. In this case, it includes neither a USB cable nor a parallel port cable.
The ML-2250, comes with a full printer cartridge, not a starter model. The toner cartridge was well wrapped with foam protecting one side.
It prints on only one side of the paper (the bottom), no duplexing.
Reviewed by Trusted Reviews May 6, 2005
Samsung ML-2250 review by PC magazine October 4, 2004
Specs for the ML 2250. The toner Part Number is ML-2250D5/XAA. Flash based user guide
| Page created: February 20, 2005 | Page last updated: January 25, 2007 |
| Prior updates: August 9, 2006 | |
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