Why lockout while printing in PSE 5.0?????

[tomlaronge]

I recently switched from PSE 4.0 to PSE 5.0 and I find that now when I am making a print that the Editor locks me out so that I can not multitask while printing. Can someone please tell me what to do to avoid the lockout? This never happened to me before.
Thank you,
Tom

[tomlaronge]

I am sorry to be a pest, but this real issue is truly hampering my printing with the Editor of PSE 5.). Can anyone tell me what is wrong and what to do about this, please?

[genevh]

That might be a new one, but on similar issues where trying to print shut down PSE, they were solved by uninstalling then reinstalling the printer drivers. Especially when PSE was the only program affected. Give that a shot and let us know. :)

[tomlaronge]

Gene,
As soon as I finish snding this reply, I will do exactly as you suggest. First, I want to offer a bit more detail in hopes this jogs some ideas.
I very carefully tried four different prints after rebooting and also shutting down and restarting the printer. When printing, two windows appeared on the screen. One was a large "print preview window". The other was a very small window sayin "Photoshop Elements at the top left and containining the name of the image and a small "cancel" box. The cursor turned into the hour glass sybol, the cancel window would not respond and I was totally frozen from soing any tasks in the editor until the print was finished. Does this detail spur any thoughts. I simply cannot figure out what is happemning, find zero information in the help menu and am at a loss as to what to do.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Tom

[tomlaronge]

O.K., I rebooted, uninstalled, reinstalled, rebbooted, started up PSE 5.0, brought one JPEG into the Organizer, went to Full Edit, cropped, sharpened and printed. I had the same issue. When I clicked on print with the print preview checked, the print previes popped up showing the top and bpottom of the photo and a small blue window opebed at the screen top. This window said, :Photoshop Elements: ans contained the name of the image file. Whrn I clicked on print, the printer cue came up, the printing process began, the small blue window read, :printing:and the image file name" the print preview window went white, the cursor turned into the hour glass and all was frozen. If I tried to cancel, the words not responding appeared.
Does anyone understand what is happening or what I am doing incorrectly. If I had not done this a thousand times in PSE 3.0 and 4,0, I would just expect everything to freeze while printing. However, my experience tells me differently.
I will be deepply appreciative of any and all ideas and suggestions.
Thank you in advance,
Tom

[genevh]

Hmmm...that wasn't supposed to happen. :confused:

I'm assuming when you installed PSE5 you have left everything at its default? Some people have reported having issues with their installations if they left their virus protection (especially Norton for some reason) and firewalls active during installation. If yours were active, you may want to try to reinstall with your antivirus, etc. shut down.

If you've tweaked you PSE5 settings, what did you change?

[TonyW]

Tom: If I understand it correctly the Print Preview window that is popping up is the one for your specific printer and not an Elements screen. If that's the case then that comes from the printer driver software not Elements and your problem is not an Elements one but a printer driver one.

What printer are you using? First thing I'd try is to uninstall the printer driver and reinstall the latest one.

BTW with my Epson R300 printer I have no problem multitasking with PSE5 even if I am using Print Preview in the Printer Properties dialogue box.

Tony

[Juergen D]

Tom,
You are only printing one image at the time? Does it eventually print? If yes, how long does it take to start?

I agree with Gene and Tony that it might be the printer driver. You may want to check the settings. Maybe it is set to spool the entire document before starting to print.

Juergen

[tomlaronge]

Gene, Juergen and Tony,
Thank you all. I will try everything you suggested. Here are the answers to your questions:
1) I left all of the settings at the default settings.
2) I am using an Epson Stylus 3800 Pro that is relatively new so that I am still learning with this.
3) The two windows that are popping up are the Photoshop Elements windows, I believe.
4) I am using a relatively new computer with the current software versions, including Norton. So, this could be an issue.
5) I printed from PSE 4 without issue until about 10 days ago on the same equipment. Therefore, the difference leaves me baffled.
6) The printing seems to start fairly rapidly after I push "START". However, I truly did not pay particular attention to this. I also was testing the various actions with relatively small image size so the time it takes to spool could easily have fooled me. I did print a 13 X19 and an 11 X 14 on Sunday, but I did not pay attention to the times. In fact, i left the room whilt printing as I could not do anything with the software.
I will try again, everything you suggest, this evening.
Again, i thank you all and I wish you a superb day.
Regards,
Tom

[tomlaronge]

As the expression goes, S.O.S.D.D. I have uninstalled and reinstalled PSE 5.0 and rebooted before and after with Norton turned off. So far no success. Before I play with the printer system since it is rather new and I am not totally familiar with it yet, I wrote to Epson Technical Support to see what they have to offer. I will keep you posted and I thank all for your help.
Tom

[tomlaronge]

Epson Tech. Support got back to be rapidly and accurately. To end a long, tortuous issue, Epson showed me that two advanced spool settings were incorrect. Why everything worked prior to my loading PSE 5.o, I will never know.
Tjank you all for your input and for your help in getting my printing issues corrected!
Tom