[Metalab Issues] #304: Label Printer Setup Issue

[Metalab Issues]

#304: Label Printer Setup Issue
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Reporter:  anlumo  |     Owner:
  Status:  new     |  Keywords:
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Comment (by a):

 Well. I spent the last 2.5 or so hours debugging this. I'm now at stage
 six - how the HELL did this ever work. I know it did, because I've used
 the label printer in the past, but I can't understand how.

 The scaling was indeed set to 200% - someone messed with this. I fixed
 that, but the labels were printed completely skewed. So I went debugging,
 and what a rabbit hole that was.

 * Firefox thought the label printer uses Letter size, this led to the
 skewing (and still does, but we'll get to that)

 This led me to discover that:

 * There was no form defined for the paper format of the label printer
 inside the windows print spooler, although it was defined in the print
 driver. Fixed by defining it.

 After this, Firefox still refused to recognize the correct paper format
 and generated skewed & cut off images in the print preview. So I tested in
 IE. This led me to discover that:

 * The windows print rendering engine would randomly revert
 landscape/portrait settings
 * The printer would randomly vanish from the printer list for no apparent
 reason
 * The system wide default settings for the label printer were complete
 lunacy

 I intended to fix the first two issues by installing the Enterprise Hotfix
 Rollup, the last one by changing the settings. This led me to discover:

 * This box didn't have Microsoft Update enabled (only Windows Update),
 subsequently it was missing security updates from 2012

 The Enterprise Hotfix Rollup was installed after fixing this, and fixed
 the print bugs in IE. Sort of. As a side effect, the boot time of the
 Lazzzor PC has decreased by over 60 seconds & the system is /noticeably/
 faster. Unfortunately, the label printer still doesn't work right.
 Printing in Firefox is still completely broken because Firefox thinks
 Letter is the correct format, and IE does neither store nor honor the
 printer settings correctly. Printing labels via IE now works, but requires
 extensively messing with the print settings every single print.

 Next steps, in my opinion:
 * Test printing behaviour in other applications (CorelDraw, Chromium?)
 * Examine the printer setting in excruciating detail using setprinter.exe
 from the w2k3 resource toolkit (which is now installed. I've fixed the
 broken PATH variable that installing it causes, to prevent the weirdo
 issues that happen otherwise.)


 But maybe someone else can approach this with a fresh mind - unfortunately
 I won't have much (or any) time to check this for the next few weeks. :/

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Ticket URL: <https://metalab.at/issues/ticket/304#comment:2>
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