Laser Printing Problems using Microsoft Windows Vista

[#1]

Update: I have tried to address many of these questions in my most recent post: Universal Print Driv...

I’ve received a lot of comments on the problems you’re having with your printers using Vista. While many of these questions have to do with products I don’t work on directly, I’ll answer all of the questions as well as I can and also refer you to other resources. The good news for HP LaserJet users is that the Universal Print Driver (UPD 3.1) solves most of the ... I’ll respond to your comments in the order I received them:

1. "I understand that this will work with laser printers. How about for inkjet printers? Do you have a list of printers that will work with Windows Vista now?" The UPD currently supports a number of Business Inkjet and Officejet devices. Find the complete list of HP devices supported within Windows Vista, including the inkjet devices, b...


2. "What are we supposed to do if our brand new Laserjet Printer P2015 is not on the list for the new Universal Print Driver?" The LaserJet P2015 is supported by the UPD. You can see the entire list of HP devices supported within Windows Vista by clicking this link.


3. "Searching for the above mentioned HP Managed Printing Administrator installation file to download. On itrc.hp.com there is a similar question posted many months ago, but without answer or any explanation why it cannot be found by searching the HP web site. Search only gives several documents, among them the Service Administration Guide. This guide mentions HPMPAINSTALL.MSI to download from www.hp.com. But from what part of the HP web site? An accurate link would be helpful." Thanks for highlighting this to me. You can download the HP Managed Printing Administration by clicking here.


4. "Downloaded all 3 UDP drivers and I have had issue's sharing a laserjet on a network. The HP is attached to a XP Home machine and am trying to print to it with a Vista machine. Seems to be a common problem with no easy answer. Got one? When I go to the sharing tab for the HP LaserJet there is no listing for Vista under Additional Drivers. It only shows XP and 2000. How do I know the drivers were installed correctly? I tried using the driver update tool on the Laserjet page and it hangs." I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems in your environment. It’s difficult to know precisely what is causing the problem without knowing more about your configuration, the HP device you are using, and how the device is connected to the network. The HP Universal Print Driver does not currently support all USB connections so if that is how your printer is connected, you’ll want to wait for a future UPD release. If you want to verify that the HP device is supported by the UPD or if you are not sure the driver installation was...and to download the UPD again. You are notified when an installation has been successful.


5. "Just wandering if anybody is having problem. I am trying to use the UPD 3.1 in Vista for HP LJ 4100 and 4050. (Have not tried anything else yet) Whenever I try to open the printer properties, it crashes Windows Explorer! I am able to open the printing preferences without a problem. Does anybody knows if this is a problem with the driver or my installation of Vista? FYI. I am using Vista Ent. Thanks. GT." This is a known issue and we're working with Microsoft on a fix.


6. "Has a driver been created to allow scanning as well? I have been able to print, but not scan on my HP LaserJet 3390. Any suggestions to solve this problem?" The HP Universal Print Driver is a printing solution. Scan drivers for the LaserJet 3390 shipped with the Vista operating system and provide basic scan functionality. A full scanning software solution will be available later this spring.


7. "I do not see the HP 7410 printer on the list of printers supported by the new driver. The driver loaded by Vista for this printer provides only rudimentary functions, defective duplexing, and no support for fax or scanning that I can determine. I cannot understand why you do not have an appropriate driver since Vista has been available since 11/06." I'm sorry, but The HP Universal Print Driver does not currently support PCL 3 devices, such as the HP 7410. For a complete list of HP devices that are supported within Windows Vista, click on this link.


8. "It appears that this driver soes not support the HP 7410 printer. The driver loaded by Vista does not appear to support proper duplexing, scanning, faxing from the computer and other important functions. When will a fully functioning driver be available? Vista has been out since 11/06." Unfortunately, The HP Universal Print Driver does not currently support PCL 3 devices, such as the HP 7410. For a complete list of HP devices that are supported within Windows Vista, click on this link.


9. "Hmm... Tried installing the drivers (PCL 6 and PS) on my Toshiba Laptop (Vista Business) - no problem. Managed to connect to my HP Color Laserjet 2840 - no problem. However, when I try to view the properties of the printer, the driver crashes Windows Explorer! Big problem Oh well, back to the drawing board." This is a known issue and we are working with Microsoft on a fix.


10. "I have a Photosmart2700 and according to the HP web site there are no VISTA drivers available? The printer is using a wireless network connection, and I have used the instructions available to make a printer definition. The definition looks correct, and it looks like the print is being sent to the printer, but it never actually gets there? Any suggestions?" The actual driver solution is located within the Vista operating system. You might try this process described for jobs that get stuck in the print queue, click here.


11. "Part of the problem that I'm having is that Vista does not want to "see" the LPT port I've installed (the PC does not come with one installed). Even when I can get it to do that, it will then not see the printer, my Laserjet 2100m. I'm running this, by the way, in a compaq 2180NX. One other think I'd love is a list of HP printers that support Postscript. Thanks for you opinion on this. Bob K." You should consider downloading the new UPD 3.1.


12. "The driver for my Laserjet 3015 all-in-one installed automatically in Vista. However, the HP software to control the machine settings no longer works so I can no longer control settings via my computer nor receive faxes to the computer. Will any updates of this software be posted?" You might consider downloading the new UPD 3.1.


13. "Dear Mr. Ferraro - I am extremely disappointed and surprised that HP is not developing VISTA drivers for the PHOTOSMART ink jet range. Was surprised that these drivers weren't incorporated directly into VISTA, as were MANY HP drivers, some for MUCH older models. The Photosmart range was extremely popular and were very capable/quality printers. I'm certain there are still tens/hundreds(s)(?) of thousands of these still in use. Even if HP developed a generic color/photo driver that still allowed you to use the printers in VISTA (even if it was missing some "extra" features), would at least be a reasonable effort to take care of your long-term customers. Abandoning these customers (and the thousands and thousands of printers still in good working order), just for getting with the times and upgrading to a state-of-the-art OS, is simply wasteful (to the environment) and neglectful (to your customers). Requiring customers (or even suggesting) that they need to purchase a new printer (on top of everything else), just because they upgraded their OS is not good customer service. I sincerely hope HP reconsiders their decision not to support the Photosmart series in Vista. I personally am looking forward to a PHOTOSMART P1100 driver. Let me know if you can look into this. For the time being, is there a work-around for the P1100 in VISTA (XP Driver with installation tweaks) or different HP color inkjet emulation? Thank you." You can download a Photosmart Print Driver by clicking here. You might have to contact HP online sup...


14. "Purchased new HP machine with MS Vista; machine does not have parallel port to attach HP LaserJet 4. This may be a common problem for new machines lacking a parallel port. Does HP offer a parallel to USB cable adapter (with drivers) for MS Vista?" Believe it or not, when I have to make similar connections for my home system, I go down to my nearby Office Products Superstore and ask for such adapters.

I know you’re struggling with ramifications of adopting Windows Vista and hope I’ve answered your questions relative to HP LaserJet printers. Please feel free to comment back on your experiences in solving these problems for your LaserJet devices . . .

-Vince

[#2]

If you're looking for more general information on printing from Windows Vista, please visit my previous blog entry,"New HP Universal Print Driver solves Vista Printing Problems for LaserJets": http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/laserjet/archive/2007/02/26/2551.html -Vince

[#3]

Given some of the questions, I did a some research, asking Customer Service about the duplexing capability on the LaserJet 1320. Here's the suggested process to make this work within UPD: (unfortunately, the blog software doesn't allow formatting comments)

"Without knowing more about your specific configuration and installation of the UPD, the technical team suggests 2 things that could address the issue. Try the second only if the first does not show duplexing for you.
1)If you replaced an existing driver with the UPD on the same queue, go to Printer Properties->Device Settings->Auto Configuration and select update now.
2)If you are connected via USB, the USB Dot4 stack may need to be loaded. Follow these steps:
• From the Start Button, right click on My Computer, and select Manage

• Select Device Manager

• In the Universal Serial Bus controllers section, right click on HP 1320 printer, and uninstall

• Disconnect the USB cable, and reconnect it.

• When the Hardware Wizard appears, click on Install from a list or specific location (Aedvanced)

• In the next Window, Select "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install" Click next

• Select Have Disk, then browse to the location of the UPD driver

• Select the hpmcpdpd.inf, Open, Open

• HP LaserJet 1320series (Dot4USB)

• The rest should be pretty straight forward."

If these do not show duplexing, please contact your customer support who will work with you on your specific environment.

-Vince

[#4]

Sorry for the length of this post, but this has been a pretty frustrating ordeal. I am about to suggest that the company take back the P2015 until it is really ready for Vista. I am hoping you can help me get over this hurdle. I just installed a new P2015dn printer on a Dell PC with Windows Vista Business. I had downloaded and unzipped the universal printer driver and plugged in the printer to the USB Port. Vista found the printer and tried to locate a driver, and then gave me the option of installing from a specified location. I navigated to the location with the drivers and it immediately said no driver found, and moved on to the next component for the printer. After erroring on the driver location and the CD that came with the printer, I had some real problems. So I went to the Universal printer driver and executed the install and had some pretty good luck. I set it up as a direct fixed mode using the USB001 port. I could print, but as someone mentioned earlier, I could not bring up the printer properties without crashing Windows Explorer. My problems did not stop there, however. Every time Vista saw the printer again as a new device (reboot, logoff and back on, unplug printer cable and plug it back in, turn off and on printer, etc.), Vista tries to go through the process of installing the printer driver again. Even clicking to tell it not to ever ask again - it still does.

At this point, I just unplugged the printer and set the machine up to print to a network printer. The interesting thing is that Windows Explorer is crashing every time I "add a printer" and select the network printer option. I read above that the Windows Explorer issue is known and will be corrected. To get a printer set up for this PC, I had to navigate to the network, select the other PC, select the printer, and connect. This was not flawless, but at least it worked.

Three Questions:

1) Is there a way that I can get this driver off my system if that is indeed a known issue until this is resolved? There is no Remove program option that I can find because this is a driver.

4) When do you anticipate having the Windows Explorer issue corrected?

3) Is there a way to make Vista stop asking me for a driver for the P2015 when I clearly have a somewhat operational universal printer driver already installed? I would at least be able to limp along with the printer without it driving the user crazy with constant errors.

Thanks,
Kerry

[#5]

Do you have a Vista printer driver for the LaserJet 3150 all-in-one? At the minimum I just need printing. Can I assign one of the printers in your supported list to it? If so, which one is the most compatible?

Thanks

Kin

[#6]

Hi, I am pulling my hair out trying to get my new Compaq Presario V6000 to print on my HP4050. When I try to "add a printer", it is not found. Here is the strange part....The printer is on a home network consisting of two OSX Macs and two old Win98SE PC's, all of which print just fine. Could this be because the HP4050 is using the "Appletalk" protocal? I tried assigning an IP address to the printer and it still cannot be found. Any suggestions/help would be hugley appreciated.

Chuck
Petaluma, CA

[#7]

To fix the problem you have to ignore Vista's Add Printer message about only using Add Printer for a non-USB device.

Instead, proceed to add the printer as an HP PCL6 printer and then select one of the USB ports for the printer. This is the key to getting the printer to work.

The Vista version of PCL 6 is necessary for color support. PCL 5 will work, but only print in B/W.

A remaining problem is that the HP Easy Printer utility, which is needed to check the printer status, cartridge status, etc., will not talk across a USB port. It requires a DOT4 port which is a software driver I have yet to find on the HP website or anywhere else.

Where is DOT4 hiding?

[#8]

Hope this helps someone. Problem was, my HP4050 could not be found by my new Vista laptop. The 4050 had an IP address of 192.168.1.109. I found out, after spending $40 to talk to an HP person, that IP address was out of range for Vista. After changing the 4050's IP address to 10.0.1.100 aand all is well!!

[#9]

RE: Question No. 14: "I Purchased new HP machine with MS Vista; machine does not have parallel port to attach HP LaserJet 4. This may be a common problem for new machines lacking a parallel port. Does HP offer a parallel to USB cable adapter (with drivers) for MS Vista?" Believe it or not, when I have to make similar connections for my home system, I go down to my nearby Office Products Superstore and ask for such adapters.

I am having this exact same problem. I've gotten two different usb to parallel port cables -- I can't get it to work. I've got my Laser Jet 4 Plus set up properly, but when I try and print a test page, it just shows "error". I'm not sure if the cables are compatible with MS Vista or not. Do you have any suggestions to help end my frustration?

[#10]

Vince,

Any idea when the "properties" fix is approximately likely roughly to be available. (Do I need to uninstall UPD 3.1)

Thanks.

David Young

[#11]

Actually quite disappointed. In trying to support Vista, we did the 3.1 update and replaced our 4250 & 4350 drivers, now the property pages crash, can't get in (These are XP BTW). SO we tried to revert, get garbage on PS and although we can print with PCL, the page fault error appears on all HP printers now. We've ripped out the univeral drivers but we're still stuck. These types of quality issues directly related to the types of printers we purchase to put on our printer servers. The error is to common to HP users, the fix has to come soon.

[#12]

You say above that "scanning drivers for the 3390 shipped with vista" but there are no instrucitons on how to set up that scanning driver. It's not intuitive to me -- i tried to add a scanning device manually, but the device is not listed. Any suggestions on how to set this up?

[#13]

> Vince, Any idea when the "properties" fix is
> approximately likely roughly to be available.
> (Do I need to uninstall UPD 3.1)
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/laserjet/archive/2007/03/15/2761.html#comment2996

Same question here. Please get the fix out here to the front lines.

We've found the last few "non-universal" postscript drivers to be extremely problematic (throwing errors, printing test pages tiled over 9 pages, etc.). One department was so frustrated they packed up the printer and were sending it back. I intercepted it and am testing it. I can get the Universal Print driver to work on XP but not on Vista. Consistently crashes explorer when I click on printer properties.

[#14]

Have been looking at an HP PhotosmartC6180 Multifunction Machine but after seeing the problems people are encountering with Vista and HP printers I wonder if the C6180 Photosmart will be problematic too? We have already had problems with our new Dell with Vista not accepting our ISP so am doing our homework before we purchase! Only reason we are looking for a new printer is.....incompatability with the old HP model!

[#15]

Have New HP laptop wireless with Vista Premium the 7410 Driver that HP offers does not allow Two Sided Printing. Prints correctly on first page but back side is reverse and upside down and on the bottom of the page. Definitly a driver problem but HP wont admit to that, trying to blame Microsoft. Any ideas.

[#16]

I very upset with HP not supporting my mothers printer, I bought her a new computer last week cuz hers getting old, she has a HP PHOTOSMART 2575 printer, now I will have go buy her a new printer since she on a fixed income.. TELL YOU WHAT IT WONT BE A HP printer abandoning me well im abandoning you to... This is a very nice printer cost a lot of money, the printer is in mint condition. Will you buy this printer back now we cant use it sorry for the harsh words but im upset your abandoning your customers like this.. Hope you find a change of heart before we buy her a new printer... please write me back ASAP before I buy her a new one. mccartneykevin@yahoo.com

[#17]

iam having HP LaserJet1020 printer, printer installed in 2000 server system, iam able to share or connect from 2000pro, XP system, but iam unable to connect from Vista system. How to solve this problem??

[#18]

Ok, I'm very frustrated. I've installed the PCL 6 Universal driver on two Vista Ultimate machines to access my NETWORKED Laserjet 2605dn and all I get are BLACK AND WHITE printouts. I'e seen in a number of places that people have had the same problem, but it is never directly addressed. Above here, BIRKB, explains how to connect it to a USB port in answering a question about this B/W problem, but I CAN'T hook it up to USB. I need this printer to be networked and accessed by VISTA machine. I also need COLOR.

I've spent the past 20 years working in the software industry and have a lot of experience working on Windows, including Vista, but this takes the cake in terms of difficult to configure h/w. First off the 2605 driver site for Vista is VERY confusing. I couldn't figure out what I really needed to down load to configure this beast. I would like a driver that does PCL 6, COLOR, VISTA, DUPLEXING and NETWORKED ACCESS for the LaserJet 2605. I've used the built in Vista Postscript 2 driver that works for a networked 2605 and it does print in COLOR, but it's extremely slow doing certain types of photo and large color chart printouts.

It appears this problem has been ongoing for MONTHS now with no apparent resolution from what I can tell. VINCE or someone else, please tell me the magic to get this to work on Vista! I CAN'T use USB and I want COLOR. Otherwise, I will need my money back.

Should I do as some suggested and download the PCL 6 driver for XP on my Vista boxes? That seems counterintutive. Is this the only path to make this work and if so, will I run into any issues on Vista especially with Networked access?

Please respond ASAP.
Thanks,
Stefan

[#19]

I have a HP Color LaserJet 3500 and there is still no driver for this printer for Vista 64 bit, and this printer does not seem to be covered by the UPD.

Is there any explanation why it is taking so long (the 32 bit driver came out in April)? Why do drivers exist for some LaserJets and not for others?