Problems plotting to a HP DesignJet 800 via USB connection

[rebarter]

I have tried to add a HP Designjet 800 plotter to my Plotter Manager and have had problems plotting. The computer is a Dell with loads of ram and a high enough spec to deal with the plotting tasks being asked of it. The connection I am using is to the USB port.

At first the plotter would not respond at all to the plot command and after trying all sorts of ideas to get the thing working it will now plot, but only the vector data and not the background image.

Has anyone had these problems and solved them ? If so I would be very grateful for some advice as to what I am doing wrong here.

[Avatart]

I have had problems with HP Printers on USB ports, not tried with a plotter though.

The first thing to check is that the Plotter Driver is the most current, you can find them on Hewlett Packard's website.

If it is just the Image that is not coming out, make sure that it shows in the print preview, it may be an issue with the way in which the drawing is setup, Image on non-plotting layer for example.

You could also try uninstalling and reinstalling the plotter (I think you may have tried this already from what you have said) or changing the port on which the plotter is attached, I found I got better results from the Serial port (not an elegant solution, but it worked).