Win7/8 printer setup

[Ron Bean]

Ran into something strange last night-- Jacob was trying to get his Win8
laptop to see the KRAMBO printer, with no success. The whole procedure
looked strange to me, so I did it with one of the new WinXP machines (a
completely different procedure), and it worked fine.

So, what did they do to Win8 that broke this?

It looked like it was trying to read some config info from the printer
over the network, and not finding it. I'm wondering if they're relying
on some new feature that older printers don't have?

[Have Blue]

Any chance it could be the firewall setting preventing printer
communication on an untrusted network?

[Tony]

Win7/8 doesn't include the drivers for old HP printers by default so you
will have to snag them from Windows update (takes a few minutes to an
hour depending on the MS update servers.) Also, Win8 does something
funky with network printers. I assume it is auto-detecting ipp instead
of just testing for a port 9100 connection to JetDirect like the old
versions did so it will take longer. I can update the JetDirect card in
the printer to make this nonsense go faster.

- Tony

On 05/23/2013 11:38 AM, Ron Bean created:

[Ron Bean]

>Win7/8 doesn't include the drivers for old HP printers by default so
>you will have to snag them from Windows update (takes a few minutes to
>an hour depending on the MS update servers.)

Is that something I could download and keep on a thumbdrive, or does it
have to be run on each machine?

The printer is a laserjet 4000, but I'm guessing any 4xxx series driver
might work. I didn't change the driver when I swapped out the old
printer (which was a 4100 or maybe a 4200), and it worked anyway.
Win8 had a 4100 driver, but I don't know if it's the same one.

[Tony]

I have had problems with drivers direct from HP not working correctly
with Win7/8 but the Windows Update drivers worked fine for the 40XX
printers. I haven't had to deal with the 41XX or 42XX printers though.
I haven't looked into side-loading the Win update drivers, but it can
probably be done.

- Tony

On 05/23/2013 04:29 PM, Ron Bean created:

[Ron Bean]

>I can update the
>JetDirect card in the printer to make this nonsense go faster.

When you say "update", do you mean firmware, or hardware?

Maybe we could make a print server out of a Raspberry Pi, that would let
people use some kind of generic driver on their laptops (Postscript or
PCL). ISTR linux has something like that based on Ghostscript (I
seldom print anything, so I don't know much about it).

[Tony]

I meant "firmware" but it looks like it will have to be hardware (the
version currently in the printer can't be easily updated according to
HP.) Tom, if you missed the model that can definitely be updated, it's
the J3113A. These old printers actually work pretty well with Windows
7/8. The only down side is that if you don't want to wait 10-60
minutes for the install, you have to manually add their IP address as a
"local" printer and install a driver from HP instead of using the one
from Windows Update. Once the driver is installed, I haven't had a
problem. They "just work" until the end of time. I haven't had a whole
lot of luck with "print servers." There always seems to be a document
that refuses to print, a queue that refuses to clear, or a disk that
mysteriously fills up.

- Tony


On 05/23/2013 10:31 PM, Ron Bean created: