Any Firefox experts?

[Tunnelcat]

My one last remaining Windows 7 system has an issue with Firefox. I know, I can fix it doing a full wipe and upgrade to Win 10, but I want to wait until MS gets their update act together with 1903. So here's the issue. A while back, I tried setting up 2 separate accounts on this computer. I installed Firefox since it's my preferred browser. Unfortunately, when I tried to print from that account, everything went south. I found that I'd forgot to set up my main Brother printer as the default printer. It was still set with some stupid Microsoft somethingoranother selection that comes with the OS. So now the problem is, even after setting the correct default printer, Firefox will NOT print from the main paper tray no matter what. It insists on using the damn side tray, which has to be fed paper. Even after deleting the account and fully uninstalling Firefox as per their instructions, it still insists on that one stupid paper tray. I even went into Firefox's console to delete those printer_printer entries, but no luck. There must be some secret registry setting that needs deleting. Any suggestions?

[Krom]

Did you check the printing defaults for the printer itself in windows for that user. It might be doing the same thing for every application.

[Tunnelcat]

There's only one user account on this computer right now. The second account was deleted because it was a PITA to work with well BEFORE I reinstalled Firefox on the main admin account. There doesn't seem to be a trace of the second account on the system, at least that I can find, but who knows, MS probably left traces of it in the registry. Every other application prints from the main paper tray without issues, Office, Adobe, all the usual MS apps and IE. Only Firefox has the issue.

[fliptw]

have you ever, when printing from firefox, actually told it to print from the main tray via the printer preferences?

[Tunnelcat]

Only in the printer window that comes up when I hit the "print" button in Firefox. It's currently set to "Automatically Select" on both of my systems, and Firefox does it correctly on my other system. At one time I did try selecting either "Tray 1" and "Tray 2" and neither selection made a difference. It's been awhile, but I'll try fiddling around with those selections again the next time I have that system turned on.

[Tunnelcat]

Ok, I tried directing Firefox to print from the main paper tray in the printer preferences section, but no luck. It defaults to using the side paper tray.

[Krom]

In about:config when you filter by " print. ", do you see an entry specifying the tray for your printer? Maybe try resetting every setting for your main printer then restart firefox (then look again and the entries should be gone/reset). Then print something again and it should re-create everything but hopefully the right way this time. There is also a variable print.save_print_settings that you could toggle to false and firefox would no longer save its printer settings. Also filtering by the printer name firefox uses might reveal something useful.

Could also just outright nuke the user preferences file (prefs.js) and let firefox recreate it, which may be more trouble that it is worth depending on how customized you have gotten your profile and settings.

[Tunnelcat]

I looked through the whole "print" list. No references to the paper tray position. Also nothing out of sorts filtering by printer name and Firefox does reference the Brother in several spots. And yes, I even nuked (prefs.js) one time a while, which WAS a hassle, but still the condition persisted. It also persisted even after a full uninstall of Firefox via their approved method for removing it completely from the system. There must be some registry entry somewhere I can't get rid of even with the complete uninstall method, because Firefox knew I had the browser on the system previously when I went to re-install it by asking me if I wanted to use my old settings, by which of course I said "no". By now, I'm to the point of just nuking everything on the OS drive when I install Win 10 and then making the hell sure I have my Brother set as the default printer BEFORE I ever install Firefox.

[Krom]

One way you can figure out what a program is reading both off the disk and out of the system registry is to grab Process Monitor from Sysinternals... The main problem is to find the one thing that is doing it out of the gigantic mountain of data that Process Monitor can collect in a couple of seconds.

[Tunnelcat]

I used that program on a previous system for troubleshooting a strange problem, so I guess I'll have to install it on this particular system and see what's going on.

[Tunnelcat]

This is just plain weird. I just majorly updated this HP workstation. Totally new SSD drive and new OS, Windows 10 Pro. Old drives not even installed. No data from the previous drives and a blank new drive. The old OS was Win 7 Pro, so there was no live account connection to MS either. Installed newest version of Firefox after making sure my Brother printer was set as the default with the newest drivers. Firefox STILL thinks that the side paper tray is the MAIN paper tray and refuses to print from that the actual main tray. I have to get up and put a sheet of paper in the side tray every damn time. I can't figure it out. It's only a problem with this particular machine too. All my other computers running Win 10 don't have the issue. I'm stumped. Something in the BIOS fer crying out loud?

[Krom]

I'm starting to wonder if it is something to do with the printer instead of the firefox or the OS...

[Tunnelcat]

How? Where would I look? For all 3 computers I have running Windows 10 Pro, with 2 of them, Firefox doesn't have this problem. It's just this older 2014 HP Workstation that's had the problem ever since I installed Firefox a couple of years ago. I originally thought it was because of an old second account leaving some refuse in the registry while it was using Win 7, but this is a totally fresh install of Win 10 including a new empty OS drive. For all 3 systems, the printer driver and utilities were all downloaded and installed from Brother's site and are the newest. Firefox was also downloaded fresh too and I installed that after the printer was installed. Edge doesn't have the issue either and I hate Edge. It doesn't make sense. There's some hitch somewhere and I just can't figure what it is.