Upgraded to Windows 7 - Now Printer Issues
Community Forums/General Help/Upgraded to Windows 7 - Now Printer Issues
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| I finally upgraded a few of my old XP machines to Windows 7 ultimate. I have a few HP desk-jet printers I keep around because the ink is so cheap. The Desk-jet 700 - 900 series never needed a driver with XP which made it a simple plug & play device. Now after hooking it up via serial port Windows 7 recognizes it as a Desk-jet 710 printer. It's actually a 712c but they all use the same driver so no worries. It reports the printer working but I cannot get it to print no matter what I try. HP recommends you use windows update which is utterly unless at fixing anything. It worked with XP so it should work with 7. This is the 32bit edition. Any idea's? |
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| Yeah, I've been bitten by that one as well in the past -- HP's website won't give you a download because it claims it's built in to windows, windows has never heard of the device and won't find the automatic update either... What I had to do to get things to work, was to explicitly download a compatible driver through the Microsoft update cabinet download site: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=deskjet (Only works in internet explorer) I don't see a driver for the Deskjet 710 there, but if you know other compatible models you may be able to download and install them instead. Alternatively: Try downloading HP's "universal print driver" from their website, which will work with the vast majority of their devices. One more thing: Under windows 8 x64 I've had some error messages printing to a laserjet 2600, which prints flawlessly after disabling the bidirectional communication in the printer drivers. Downside is that you can't see the amount of remaining toner and such, but at least the damn thing will print without errors after disabling the feature. |
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| Driver for HP710C/712 |
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| "This website does not offer updates for the operating system on this computer." I already removed IE from this machine so that won't help. LOL I've already been to that page GFK and it doesn't give you a download. I'm manually extracting the driver from my XP disk now. I even installed Oracle VM and put XP PRO on it. For some reason it is not reading the serial port so its still not working. :( |
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| FFS... this is a lot of the reason why I ditched HP/Compaq. When you say you "can't get it to print", what exactly do you mean? Are jobs going to the print queue? Is the printer even visible to Word/whatever app you're using? Can you print test pages? |
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| Note that the printer isn't going to work unless you have the serial port itself showing up OK in the windows device list -- And you may need to make sure that the port is enabled in the computer BIOS, being a legacy port it's quite possible that it's disabled by default. If the port does NOT show up as operational in the windows device list, you may need to download & first install the motherboard drivers for your particular board. |
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| That era of HPs are VERY problematic down to the actual hardware in the computer they are compatible with. I had a 712C and a 5550 that would work on early XP systems, not on later XP systems and only on certain 7 systems. With the 5550 using the parallel port vs the usb port made no difference in the compatibility issues. It is part of why I now use a Brother Laser Printer. |
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| By the way -- it just occured to me that you said 'serial port' -- The 712c doesn't use serial, it should be a standard parallel printer. Under the printer driver settings, ports, make sure that you have it pointed at LPT1: and not a serial port like COM1/COM2/COM3/etc |
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| You're right I should have known better. What I meant when I said serial was the parallel port. I will check options in the bios and so far I've had no luck with Oracle VM. I'm not sure why any of those settings would have changed since this very same machine used to run XP natively. In the XP VM it shows up under printers but the jobs just queue up or say out of paper. However there is some weirdness in the device manager. What I expected to see isn't there and this has to do with the VM drivers. This is not a fancy printer so it bothers me a bit that a device so low level won't work on Windows 7. I had to install my video drivers under XP mode but after that it worked fine. I really don't feel like buying a new printer because newer ones (especially brothers) eat up ink like crazy. Friends and family kept giving me these old Deskjets because they knew I still ran XP. So I have 4 now that I can't use unless I hook up one of my XP boxes. :( I have a really nice canon and epson printer but can't afford the ink. LOL |
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| If you are running it under a VM, look around in the settings to see if it has any options to explicitly allow direct parallel/serial pass-through -- without that, the host OS could potentially be interferring with the data streams as well. |
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| Another potential approach: Get a network print server box that allows you to hook up a parallel or USB printer straight to the network without being connected directly to your own PC. You still need working drivers for the printer, but at least that way you're bypassing potential problems with parallel communications and support on your own PC. (Intall the drivers, and instead of selecting LPT1 as a port you can create a new TCP/IP port, and point it to the IP address of the print server device) New Parallel print servers run you around $50 or so, or you can get used ones much cheaper through ebay. (I see a number of the P Jetdirect 300x adapters listed there for ~$10 or so, they used to cost around $300 new back in the day) |
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| Had some similar issues with my new Win8 (Brother MFC device) and old Win7 pc (HP Laserjet 4P). I bought two serial port to usb cable. Cost around 10 € each and worked fine for me. I now print over virtual USB ports. Might be worth a try. |
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