Fixing HP Mopier, Collation, and Storage problems (WIN 7)

After upgrading to the latest HP “Universal” drivers, our HP LaserJet CP4525 printers started reporting that they were “Unable to store job at printer”, that they ran out of memory, and were “Unable to collate job at printer”.  The error messages suggested the disk wasn’t present, was full, that I needed to delete files, add RAM, or even a very expensive EIO hard disk. Didn’t get much obvious help from the HP Universal Print Driver Systems Administrator’s Guide either.

I tried adding RAM to the full capacity.  That didn’t help.  Here’s how I ended up fixing the problem, thanks to piecing together dozens of support forum posts for different printer models and a little experimentation.

  1. Go to Start / Devices and Printers (yours may say Printers and Faxes).
  2. Right click the Printer Icon of the printer giving you problems and click Printer Properties (not plain old properties that’s at the bottom).
  3. While on the General table, click the Change Properties button near the bottom left (otherwise you’ll get a read-only mode of grey items).
  4. Change over to the Device Settings tab.
  5. Ensure that the Mopier Mode is set to Disabled.
  6. Ensure that the Job Storage is also set to Disabled.
  7. Click Apply, ideally to see there were no errors in doing this.
  8. Click OK to close the dialog.