Member Avatar for hrow

Having a bad time with my G5 2.5. Upgraded to OS X 10.3.6 and everything has gone downhill from there. System slowed dramatically - fans whirred - and I was thinking of lawsuits that Apple would soon be facing for false advertising relative to their speed claims. Upgrade to 10.3.7 and nothing improved.

Reloaded the OS to take me back and I am now on 10.3.5 and the system is MUCH faster but I do not get a printer dialouge box when I try to print out of Safari. Nothing at all shows up when I hit print from the File Menu. Everything else prints fine.

Have updated to the latest Java level but that didn't help. Any ideas for a relatively new Mac user?

Thanks!

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Dani AI

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If Safari's Print command vanishes while other apps still print, the fault usually sits between Safari's front end and the system printing stack rather than the physical printer. The shortest diagnostic path is: (A) isolate Safari itself, (B) capture any error messages the system produces when the Print command is invoked, and (C) repair or replace the smallest component that fails. The steps below are ordered from least to more-invasive.

  • Disable in‑page plug‑ins first (move items out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins while Safari is quit), then relaunch and try Print.
  • Reset Safari preferences by quitting Safari and moving ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist to the Desktop (do not delete — keep the file for rollback). Relaunch Safari and test printing.
  • Try printing a tiny local page (a one‑line .html saved on the desktop). If that prints but complex pages do not, the problem may be how a particular page content or plug‑in triggers Safari’s print pipeline.

If those quick checks don’t show the cause:

  • Boot in Safe Mode (hold Shift at startup) and try printing. Safe Mode suppresses third‑party extensions; if printing works there the culprit is non‑Apple software.
  • While pressing Print, watch Console.app (Applications/Utilities/Console) for entries mentioning cups, cupsd, print, filter failed or Safari. Those messages point to which filter, PPD or driver is failing and guide the next repair step.
  • If logs implicate CUPS filters or the PPD, reinstall the printer driver or try the generic PostScript driver; if system printing components seem damaged, reapplying the appropriate OS X combo updater or reinstalling the Safari package will refresh those files.

This expands on points made by , and : use an alternate browser only as a short‑term workaround and use Safe Mode and Console output to decide whether to reset user prefs, swap plugins, reinstall drivers, or refresh system updates. Back up preference files before removing them so changes are reversible.

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Member Avatar for Dani

Know of some printing problems with Jaguar but Panther was supposed to correct that. Your thread title says cannot print FROM safari but in your post you state cannot print from OUTSIDE safari? If you go to Applications/Utilities/Print Center does the document show up in the print queue?

Member Avatar for hrow

Know of some printing problems with Jaguar but Panther was supposed to correct that. Your thread title says cannot print FROM safari but in your post you state cannot print from OUTSIDE safari? If you go to Applications/Utilities/Print Center does the document show up in the print queue?

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No, nothing shows up in the queue at all from Safari (though it does from all other programs). Basically, if you hit Print in Safari the menu just disappears and literally nothing happens.

Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hello,

I am not sure what is driving your Safari problems. Have you gone into Page Setup / Print setup, and set the options there first? Does a printer show up for you to properly format for?

For a short term fix, you might consider www.mozilla.org and grabbing the Firefox browser. While it won't fix your Safari problem, it will give you an alternative in the meantime.

Also, I would try printing to a file, a .pdf specifically. See if the print engine handles that correctly.

Christian

Member Avatar for hrow

Hello,

I am not sure what is driving your Safari problems. Have you gone into Page Setup / Print setup, and set the options there first? Does a printer show up for you to properly format for?

For a short term fix, you might consider www.mozilla.org and grabbing the Firefox browser. While it won't fix your Safari problem, it will give you an alternative in the meantime.

Also, I would try printing to a file, a .pdf specifically. See if the print engine handles that correctly.

Christian

Suspecting that the problem had to do with the bizarre upgrade / downgrade path I took to rid myself of the speed problem I decide to give something a try.

I had gone from 10.3.5 to 10.3.6 where the problems first started. The upgrade to 10.3.7 didn't help much so I reinstalled 10.3.4 and upgraded that to 10.3.5 where everything except Safari was fine. Assuming that the problems had originated in 10.3.6 and had remained there even after the upgrade, I decide to skip over it and go directly to 10.3.7. Viola. It worked. Safari prints again and the system is nearly (though not quite) back up to the speed levels of 10.3.5.

Confused? To simplify... stay away from 10.3.6.

Thanks to all for their help!

Member Avatar for lucidsystems

Try removing the printer from your system and then adding it again.

If this dose not work try to deleting the caches in /Library/Caches/ then reboot the machine.

If this is still not working. Create a new account on the system and see if they have the same problem.

Good luck.

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Lucid Information Systems.
Information processing and storage consultants

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