T42 - Problem with IR port communication

[jon17034]

I recently purchased a new T42 that I use for both personal use and work. My employers provided me with a portable printer (a Canon BJC-55) that can use either USB or Infrared communication. I have used this printer with my older laptops with IR without any problems or any special adjustments needed to get the printer to work and the printer still works just fine with these older laptops (an IBM A21e with USB IR dongle, and a Dell Inspiron 4150 with onboard IR). When I try to print anything from the T42, however, the printer operates extremely slowly (it can take 15 minutes or more to print a single page). The printer works fine if I use the USB port. On the older laptops, whenever the printer was ready and in range of the IR port, an icon on the taskbar would indicate that another Infrared device was within range and had been detected. The T42 does not do this consistently. It has done this once or twice at random intervals. Because of the awkward location of the port itself, I have elevated and angled the T42 to align properly with the printer port in several different positions. Additionally, I tried testing the IR port with a PDA and got similar results - works with the old laptops, does not with the T42. The PDA did see the T42 and tried to establish a connection, but was unsuccessful.

Since the printer works well with the other laptops and with USB on the T42, I believe that there is nothing wrong with the printer (despite my temper). I have checked that the IR port is enabled in TP Configuration and the system BIOS. I have played around with the port's settings in the BIOS (address, IRQ, etc...) and have tried multiple configurations of the hardware properties. The most obvious problem might have been with the Maximum connect Setting, but this is set for the maximum (4,000,000 bps) and scaling it back also made no difference. I cannot think of anything else to try and was hoping that someone else had a similar problem and, more importantly, had come up with a solution. Maybe I am overlooking something simple.

Config: T42 (2378-DXU)
Windows XP (SP-2)
512 MB RAM
Radeon M-9600-64MB