PRB: Certain PCL-Based Printer Drivers Print Text That is Color or Gray-Scale as Black Text on a Black and White Printer (818169)

SYMPTOMS

Certain PCL-based printer models that are based on the Hppcl5ms.drv printer driver may print color text or gray-scale text as black text when printed on a black and white printer. This problem occurs with various applications when you use any of the products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because of a limitation in the interaction between these Windows versions of Unidrv and the PCL-based printer driver models that use the Hppcl5ms.drv printer driver.

WORKAROUND

Certain applications, such as Winword may detect some specific -- but not all -- printer models that are known to have exhibited this deficency and give special treatment to them while printing to those particular printer drivers. These printer drivers were known to be based on the Hppcl5ms.drv printer driver.

For example, to overcome this known limitation, Winword treats differently all printer models of the HP LaserJet 4nnn and 5nnn series.

Other applications that do not perform this special treatment may exhibit these symptoms on any printer driver that is based on Hppcl5ms.drv.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

As a result of this limitation in these Windows versions of Unidrv, certain other driver models that are based on the HPpcl5ms.drv also exhibit these symptoms even with Winword. At the time that this issue was dealt with in Winword, these other driver model types were not known. Therefore, any printer driver that is not on this list for special treatment by Winword exhibits the limitations described in "Symptoms". This is not a bug in the printer driver.

Another related symptom that you may experience in certain limited situations with PowerPoint is characters being printed two times (characters appear double or shadowed).