Beware HP's horrendous printer-driver glitch

Reduced dialog

I can see why this might happen: some of the dialog boxes for setting printer parameters could be quite large, so wouldn't fit on a 1,024 x 576 screen.

Tablet PCs make life harder for developers who have make sure their software works on anything from 1,024 x 576 to 2560 x 1600.

By Stiggy on 11 Sep 2009

Update

Since that was written, a couple of thoughts have come to mind:

1) many drivers have a "show unsupported resolutions" -- now I am pretty sure that Dick and I tried that and it wasnt possible on that particular HP model (not having it to hand means I cant recheck this)

2) we could have plugged in an external screen, and switched to external screen only -- not much cop if you are away from your office or home though

Overall i think its pretty poor that this screen resolution has come about -- its can only be because of cost cutting

jon

By JonH_ on 11 Sep 2009

XP...

I thought XP laid out 800x600 as the minimum a graphics card must be able to drive in order to work with XP?

At a guess, Microsoft hacked XP to work with netbook resolutions, but as MS specified 800x600 as the minimum resolution for XP, developers worked to that standard...

According to Microsoft, a PC must have the following minimum specifications:
233Mhz Processor
64MB RAM
1.5GB Disk space
800x600 display
(That was as of May 2002)

So it is hardly a surprise that 7 years later developers expect a PC to fulfill the minimum requirements of XP, when they install their software...

It is a bit of a silly bug, but there again, why are the manufacturers getting away with fitting a display that doesn't meet the minimum requirements for installing Windows XP?

By big_D on 11 Sep 2009

HP nightmare

HP are the pits. My Compaq V5115EU was the worst laptop on god's green earth - the screen literally fell off. My PSC1510 FORCES you to buy a new colour cartridge even if you want to print in B&W only because it prints a test page every time you switch on until you replace it, with no workaround. And now this. I replaced the Compaq with a used Lenovo X60s with dock, DVD drive, 2GB memory and XP Pro for £280 from a used business reseller on eBay. £280!!! Now I just need to replace that printer with the smallest simplest black and white printer ever. Any suggestions?!

By gavmeister on 11 Sep 2009

HP Mini and Print Driver Workaround

Hi John:
Thanks for the opportunity to help our HP Mini customers get their printers up and running. When technology doesn't work the way it should, it's incredibly frustrating -- it's happened to me; it's happened to all of us. At HP, we really do appreciate customers and reviewers sharing issues, because we want and need to make it right.
First, I should tell you I work for HP in the U.S., but you should also know I work in social media, not tech support.
That said, I wanted to share the steps to set up your preferred printer with an HP Mini.
These instructions came with a very clearly labeled card in the box for my HP Mini 1140 Vivienne Tam edition, and there also referenced in the HP Consumer Support Forums:

1. Click Properties to open the Display Properties window.
2.
Click Settings tab, click Advanced button at the bottom of the window. A new window opens to adjust the monitor settings.
3.
Click Monitor tab, List All Modes button. The List All Modes window opens.
4.
From the resulting list, select 800 x600, True Color (32 bit), 60 Hertz and click OK .
5.
Click OK twice more to return to the System Requirements Results window.
6. The new setting satisfy the system requirements and you can continue with the product installation by following the on-screen instructions.

When the installation is complete, see Return the display resolutions settings to their original values.

You can find the HP Consumer Support Forums here:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/

Again, thanks for the opportunity to listen and provide an answer.

Angela LoSasso
U.S. Social Media
HP's Imaging and Printing Group
www.twitter.com/AngelaAtHP

By AngelaAtHP on 11 Sep 2009

I seem to recall having a problem with a networkable HP laser at one of our sites - clevery, the software wouldn't install on a computer which was configured as a domain controller, which meant that we couldn't use the installer program to put the drivers on the server. I did manage to manually get the basic printer driver installed, but not any of the additional software.

By davidbryant4 on 11 Sep 2009

HP Mini and Print Driver Workaround

Hi John:
Thanks for the opportunity to help our HP Mini customers get their printers up and running. When technology doesn't work the way it should, it's incredibly frustrating -- it's happened to me; it's happened to all of us. At HP, we really do appreciate customers and reviewers sharing issues, because we want and need to make it right.
First, I should tell you I work for HP in the U.S., but you should also know I work in social media, not tech support.
That said, I wanted to share the steps to set up your preferred printer with an HP Mini.
These instructions came with a very clearly labeled card in the box for my HP Mini 1140 Vivienne Tam edition, and there also referenced in the HP Consumer Support Forums:

1. Click Properties to open the Display Properties window.
2.
Click Settings tab, click Advanced button at the bottom of the window. A new window opens to adjust the monitor settings.
3.
Click Monitor tab, List All Modes button. The List All Modes window opens.
4.
From the resulting list, select 800 x600, True Color (32 bit), 60 Hertz and click OK .
5.
Click OK twice more to return to the System Requirements Results window.
6. The new setting satisfy the system requirements and you can continue with the product installation by following the on-screen instructions.

When the installation is complete, see Return the display resolutions settings to their original values.

You can find the HP Consumer Support Forums here:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/

Again, thanks for the opportunity to listen and provide an answer.

Angela LoSasso
U.S. Social Media
HP's Imaging and Printing Group
www.twitter.com/AngelaAtHP

By AngelaAtHP on 11 Sep 2009

Jack of all trades....

..master of none!

I simply don't understand why people spend a substantial sum of money on what is basically an inkjet -in real terms worth at most £50- with all manner of unneeded gadgets bolted-on to it.

It's still an inkjet, with inkjet reliability issues, invasive and buggy drivers, not to mention sky-high running costs.

If you are going to spend £100 or more and want a reliable printer, buy a real printer.

A laser.

By Anteaus on 12 Sep 2009

Anteaus is right

he is, you know. but having a scanner and copier in with the printer is incredibly useful for a home office. Is there such thing as a laser all-in-one?

By gavmeister on 12 Sep 2009

I can see what drives people to opt for the all-in-one, but in many ways it's based on unsound reasoning.

Scanners are inexpensive, and who uses fax nowadays?

A decent sheetfed scanner and laser printer will perform the role of a occasional-use copier quite acceptably. An inkjet all-in-one is going to be struggling to copy more than a few pages at once, and will cost a fortune in catridges if used this way very often.

Laser MFU's (including colour) are certainly available but tend to be larger and considerably pricier. But then, they are built to a much higher standard than the typical inkjet multi, since they are designed for business use. They will also typically take output from multiple computers via a LAN with IP printing, and will use a straighforward PCL or postscript driver.

No offence intended agsinst HP, BTW. In fact I'd recommend an HP laser printer, or laser MFU if your budget stretches to it.

By Anteaus on 12 Sep 2009

thanks but

I am now religiously against HP. It's just over. great that these exist, silly of me that I didn't realise! I'll check out other brands like Xerox, Canon and Samsung. I hear you on faxing but there is something kind of cool, immediate and 80s about faxing.

By gavmeister on 13 Sep 2009

reliability?

"It's still an inkjet, with inkjet reliability issues"

I must admit, I don't understand that statement. I have used DeskJets since the original came out (and before that the ColorJet). My 650C got left sitting in a corner for 9 months, whilst working on contract and it still worked, without fuss, when I got back.

Likewise my 990CXi and the PS2160 (MFD) were both reliable work horses. Yes, they aren't cheap to run, but they were right for what we needed - cheap colour proofing, when colour lasers were too expensive.

"and who uses fax nowadays?"

Businesses? I probably end up having to fax as much as I print these days. My girlfriend has to fax through the order for the kitchen every weekend, that is 15 pages of fax right there... In business, at least here in Germany, e-mails can't be used for contractual uses, but fax can, so it is still a heavily used service.

"A decent sheetfed scanner and laser printer will perform the role of a occasional-use copier quite acceptably."

True, although we currently use a Ricoh photocopier as a network scanner (scan to email) and printer.

But a laser printer + sheetfeed scanner takes up a lot more space than an integrated laser printer/sheet feed scanner or inkjet.

Plus you don't need a computer to fax or copy. Apart from a couple of Epson inkjets, I haven't seen any separates which would work together as a copier, without a computer in the middle.

MFDs aren't for everyone and individual devices will often give better results, but for a cheap, compact solution, you can't really beat them. Especially if they are going to be used a lot without a PC being switched on...

By big_D on 17 Sep 2009

theoldone

I have found the Epson printer/scanner drivers for the SX200 impossible to install. I have tried in my spare hours over the last two weeks , contacted Epson who advised me to mess around with MSCONFIG , it turns out they tell twenty people a day to do the same , then I read that it does not work with USB 1.1 so I installed a new board with USB 2 but still no luck. My computer is still suck in D and S Startup mode and Epson have stopped answering my EMails. Why they tell people to mess around with their computer without finding out about their system and abilities beats me.
What was wrong with letting Windows Wizard find the requires drivers as they used to instead of providing a disk with driver loading programs that can not find the machine while the computer on the other hand is flashing up messages about finding new hardware it wants to install the drivers for and Epson's instructions are to close all windows attempts to take control of loading drivers. Well it does do photocopies but as for the rest !!!!!!!

By theoldone on 19 Sep 2009

hp 1210 driver problems

Hi

Just to let you know about another issue. I've recently installed Windows 7 RTM on a couple of computers at home (there is an enterprise edition available for 90 day trial while I wait for general availability). We've got about 5 computers at home and an archaic hp psc 1210 as the main family printer connected to the main computer. The main PC is running XP Pro x86, but the 2 most frequently used PCs are running 7 RTM x64 and 7 RC x64.

hp hasn't released a vista/7 driver for this printer, so Windows uses a default printer profile while installing the drivers on the 7-based laptops. The idea is that we can print wirelessly to the printer when the main XP PC is turned on (which the 1210 is connected to). However, when we submit a document from the 7 laptops, there are about 6 lines where the printer prints a horrible out-of-alignment row of pixels, and it ruins the quality of even a simple word document. However, when printing from within XP on the main PC, it prints perfectly fine so it's clearly a default 7 driver issue which hp has provided MS with.

If you want a photo of what I mean, PM me or reply on here. Basically hp have cocked up badly on submitting drivers for Windows 7.

By NickMC07121989 on 22 Sep 2009

Each to his own

I have an HP7780 which is reliable, reasonably quick, cheap to run (quotes as less than many colour lasers), and even produces reasonable photos.
My gripe is along with Johns, why are these drivers so massive. Mine takes 15 minutes to install even when I turn off all of the "features". I worked at Olivetti when the 1st inkjets came out and the drivers fitted on one 3 1/2" floppy (thats less than 1.44Mb to the uninitiated). On the KISS principle bloatware is bound to be more buggy because there is so much of it!

By MIssingLink on 2 Oct 2009

Updated drivers

The drivers have been updated on hp.com last month to take care of this issue. Please have a try.
(I work for HP too.)

By mtfitzgerald on 7 Oct 2009

Fit for purpose

My company runs a number of small offices with only one staff member, a PC and a MFP. We opted for the least cost HP which included a LAN interface. Quite reasonable especially as the amount of printing is fairly low.
The only trouble is that the main application they use is run within terminal services and we discovered that these printers were very unreliable within the TS app.
The response from HP, these printers are for SOHO use and not intended for server printing so the driver will not work.
Duh! One man and a PC sure looks like a small office to me!

By MIssingLink on 8 Oct 2009

Drivers can be expanded

While not obvious, the HP driver .EXE packages can be expanded using WinRAR and put on a memory stick. You can then select a visible printer in the add printer dialog, point it at the inf file for the correct OS and it will install the drivers only.

By mtfitzgerald on 9 Oct 2009

Don't tell me about HP

I love the hardware. I use my multifunction J6410 at home a lot, all of it, fax, scanner, the lot.
But the software...
Currently, now on Win 7 and they only have a basic printer driver - so can't scan or fax from my PC.
Previously, printing problems, well docuented, but the HP provided patch wouldn't install. It said I didn't have a relevant device installed. I've been using the relevant device.
Bofore that, another issue, they told me to uninstall and reinstall, but the installer fell over. I ended up hacking dozens of locations in the registry to get it sorted out.
So HP software - a huge raspberry. AND I WANT MY WIN 7 DRIVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Terryoflondon on 24 Oct 2009