Windows 7 and printer drivers?

[Russ Smith]

Have a user who I upgraded from a XP 32 bit machine to Win & ultimate 64 bit(so she can have bitlocker). She has a HP 3390 all in one on her desk because she does the payroll and it's better to have a private printer for her to do that since it's confidential material.

The 3390 worked great with XP although we lost the ability to network it and had to use it as a local printer only connected via USB(after a server crash about a year ago it just wouldn't work again as a network printer).

So I did some research ahead of time and was glad to find that Win 7 has an installed driver that works with the 3390. So I plugged it in to her new machine after using Easy Transfer to copy over her files, it added the printer with an Icon saying 3390/3392 PCL5. Tried to print a test page, nothing. Tried again, nothing. Tried to print from her accounting program nothing. We deleted and added back the printer at least 6 times, at one point there were printouts stuck in the queue from 3390 to 3390(5). It took over an hour to get those to all clear out of the queue. In the meantime I plugged it in to my own Win 7 laptop it added the exact same icon, no test page, but it printed from Word immediately.

After her queue cleared we tried again, failed. My only guess is that Easy Transfer copied over some setting or driver from Xp 32 bit and the printer is trying to use that driver even though it has the correct driver installed? I have looked but can't find the XP32 bit driver anywhere on the machine to delete it.

If it just that it won't work with Win 7 I'd be ok, it's old, but it does work with my Win 7 it just won't work with hers. I even posted a question about it on an HP printer forum and everyone says the same thing go to HP's page and download the Win 7 64 bit driver, there is NO driver it clearly tells you on that page use the built in driver that comes with Win 7.

 

[Russ Smith]

man talk about silly. We unplugged the printer, 3 hours later my boss came over to try his luck at it. he plugged in the USB cable, went to printer properties to print a test page and voila it printed. For some reason this time it did NOT install the driver and the 3390/3392 PCL5 icon, it just used the already installed Universal Printer Driver. Why it didn't do that the first half dozen times we tried it is beyond me.

But it was up and running in 20 seconds. The folks on the HP forum were surprised too they said that's what is supposed to happen it either installs the driver it needs, or just uses the UPD, but that's automatic, and in our case it was clearly trying to use the wrong driver and that's why it wouldn't print. So nobody not even the HP expert had an explanation for why it suddenly decided to use the UPD and works.

Oh well at least she can do our payroll and timesheets now.

 

[Chaz]

Remove the printer and any specifically installed drivers for it.

Then plug it in via usb.

Does it install the printer on it's own when you plug it in?

 

[Chaz]

Never mind.

Looks like you got it.

It looks like from the HP site that the Universal driver is the right one for that OS.

 

[Russ Smith]

Remove the printer and any specifically installed drivers for it.

Then plug it in via usb.

Does it install the printer on it's own when you plug it in?

Yeah that was the whole thing everytime we plugged it in via USB, it would automatically install the printer. And each version had a (2) or 3 etc in it so it knew you'd already connected the printer and then deleted it.

So for some reason it kept installing and then trying to use the wrong driver. Very weird it worked when it installed that way on my machine, but not hers. What works now it didn't install at all, it's just using the already installed UPD.

Basically the answer I got from the HP site was that's how it's supposed to work, why it didn't work the first half dozen times you plugged it in is hard to answer.

But it works.