[sue.words]

My Samsung mono laser printer, M2835DW, which has hardly caused a moment's trouble in four years, has suddenly started misbehaving – slightly at first, but now very badly.

 

After a lot of digging around, mainly online, I have come to the realisation that the cause is probably the fact that I updated my MacBook to Catalina a few weeks ago.

 

(I'm rather surprised that it has taken so long for the problem to make itself obvious – perhaps this is because I don't do a lot of printing.) Apparently, Catalina (OS 10.15) is a 64-bit system and its predecessor, Mohave, was 32-bit. (I'm a bit uncertain about the simplicity of how I've expressed this, because when I went from High Sierra to Mohave I thought the change caused the same sort of issue with the version of MS Office for Mac I was using.)

 

I went to the Samsung website intending to download a driver update but found (if I recall correctly) that my printer was no longer supported with updates.

 

Very annoyed, I began thinking about biting the bullet and buying a new printer.

 

At some point, I can't remember how, I discovered that Samsung printer support is now being handled by HP, and late last night, I found a page on their website which showed that Catalina driver updates WERE available for my printer. (I took a screenshot of that page and could retrieve its url.)

 

I downloaded what was on offer and planned to install it this morning. 

This is what I had to do:

 

How to update the firmware using a USB cable.

1. Make sure that the machine is connected to the PC with a USB cable. 2. Drag 'SWUPGRADE_ON.prn' and drop down it on usblist.exe.

3. Drag the firmware file(*.hd) and Drop down it on usblist2.exe. And then, firmware update will be started automatically.

4. The firmware update will start.
Once the firmware update is complete, the machine will be rebooted automatically.

 

​There were little illustrations of what the four files looked like in the Finder, so I thought following the instructions would be simple.

 

I am now sitting with the printer and MacBook connected by USB cable, as instructed, and my Finder window looks like the illustration except that the icon for usblist2.exe different. (Does that matter?)

 

When you Drag and Drop in this sort of situation (eg, when you download a new program and to install it you have to drag its icon into the Applications folder icon) the target location seems to "swallow" the new material. But when I do as instructed in (1) and (2) the dragged file just sits on top of usblist2.exe and can be moved away agin.

 

It doesn't surprise me at all that neither of the things that are supposed to happen automatically happen.

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

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My bet is that even tho the page says it's for a MAC they have given you the PC version.  (The one page says make sure the printer is connected via USB to the PC.) The file extensions are all Windows extensions so not surprising that a MAC has no idea what to do with them.  Check some of the other downloads and see if they all have the same file extensions.

[RKinner]

My bet is that even tho the page says it's for a MAC they have given you the PC version.  (The one page says make sure the printer is connected via USB to the PC.) The file extensions are all Windows extensions so not surprising that a MAC has no idea what to do with them.  Check some of the other downloads and see if they all have the same file extensions.

[RKinner]

Can't see what url you are at but I went to:

 

https://support.hp.c.../model/16462891

chose the macOS 10.15

and it offered just one download:

 

Samsung Universal Print and Scan Driver

V3.91.00 19.2 MB Mar 2, 2020 Download

 

Is that what you got?

[sue.words]

Thank you so much for responding RKinner! Sorry I have been unable to pursue what you've said until now.

 

Not sure now by what route I got there but this is (I think) the url from which I downloaded the files that were no use to me: https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/samsung-xpress-sl-m2835-laser-printer-series/16462889/document/c06520117 

 

I have now gone to the url you quote* and downloaded from there V3.91.00.

 

(*The abbreviated url in your reply https://support.hp.c.../model/16462891 caused an error message ("Safari can't find the server"), but the longer version  https://support.hp.c.../model/16462891that appeared in the email I received notifying me that there was a response from Geeks to Go did work. Very odd! I am explaining this and quoting the correct url for the sake of anyone else with the same issue.)

 

I can see that the contents of V3.91.00.dmg look much more Mac-orientated than what I downloaded previously: three folders, MAC_Data, MAC_ICDM and MAC_Printer.

I have just looked inside each of these folders and there are a lot more files inside. Unfortunately, so far I haven't come across some nice simple instructions on how to proceed now – like the ones I showed above (for the wrong download!) Would you mind giving me some guidance about how to make use of all this data?

[RKinner]

I'm a PC guy but I found this:

 

https://fileinfo.com/extension/dmg

 

Perhaps it will make more sense to you.

[sue.words]

You are very, very kind, RKinner!

 

I have had a look at what you have directed me to and think I'd better tackle it tomorrow after a good night's sleep! I will report back.

 

Thank you so much.

[sue.words]

My problem is now resolved! In case this is of relevance to anyone else, this is what I did.

 

I had downloaded V3.91.00.dmg (also quoted as Samsung_Mac_10.15_Driver_V3.91.00.dmg) from https://support.hp.c.../model/16462891 on the advice of RKinner (above).

 

The download contained so much that I was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to install it.

 

What a friend advised this morning was to go to a file inside called  Printer Driver.pkg (Samsung_Mac_10.15_Driver_V3.91.00.dmg >MAC_Printer >Printer Driver.pkg) and then double-click it. Then it’s just a matter of following the prompts as usual.

 

At first, after I’d done everything and I went to print a test, the printer seemed to be up to its old tricks, spewing out page after page with garbage across the top line or top few lines.  [Terribly hard to remember exactly what you did, isn’t it? I don’t think I did anything significant after this.] Then I got a page-and-a-half of something new under the heading “Network configuration”. Then I did another test and it worked perfectly!

 

Thank you again, RKinner, for getting me the first step along the right road.

[RKinner]

Glad we could help.  Thanks for the feedback.