HP LaserJet 2100; Utility for Macintosh? Tray 3 Problem

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I've had an HP LaserJet 2100 for a few years. It only prints intermittently from Tray 3 (the optional lower tray under the machine). Last night I finally figured out the cause. The tray is "locked" in software. I'm a little unclear on what the purpose of this feature is, but the effect is that most applications can't use paper in Tray 3 when printing, although Microsoft Word '97 doesn't have any trouble with it.

This is why the failure appeared intermittent. I wasn't tracking with which application I made the printing attempts. Try to print from Word '97 in OS 9.1 and Tray 3 works fine. Try to print on the OSX machine, and it refuses. Simlarly for SimpleText in OS 7.6.1.

There is an HP Printer Utility one can download which can be used to unlock the tray. Presumably, this is how the tray was locked in the first place (bought it used at Goodwill). But I don't have any PCs on my home network and the utility is (as far as I know) PC only. Is there a Macintosh workaround for this?

BTW, anyone else having Tray 3 or Tray 2 problems, print out a status page and check that all trays are "unlocked". I finally found an HP tech note on this issue.

 

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Never mind. There's a Macintosh version of the needed utility.

I got the idea that there was no Mac version from some of the stuff I read at fixyourprinter.com but either they were wrong or I read what they wrote wrongly.

I should be fixed up now. So, if you get a used HP printer and one tray won't work (typically reports out of paper when it is not) you may simply have a locked tray rather than a hardware problem (faulty paper present sensor).