Quick Link: HP Universal Print Drivers for Windows

We are in the process of troubleshooting why the HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn once worked through Remote Desktop Services connections for remote connections to a Windows 7 machine but now does not. It works for remote to RDS sessions, but not for desktop RDP connections to this one machine.

• HP Universal Print Driver Series for Windows

The above link is good as of this writing. It has links to all versions that we may need to work with:

We already ran through the process of disabling the setting in Group Policy for the Remote Desktop Easy Print driver to be chosen first. Doing this has not changed anything so far. :(

• Microsoft Forums: How to Disable Easy Print service

From what we can tell, the print driver fails to install on this particular machine where on machines the driver seems to work as expected. So, we now know that the situation is isolated to this one machine.

Hopefully after we ground zero (wipe) the spool service setup including all drivers that we can get things to work as expected.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows 7 – Connecting To A Legacy HP LaserJet 5Si

We have this old workhorse of a printer that we received way back when from a new at that time client. It had not been “working” for a while. They wanted a new printer which we ended up selling to them.

After tinkering with the printer it turned out to be the no-name refill toners they were using that was causing the problems.

When we installed an HP genuine toner and ran a number of cleaning pages through the print quality became quite reasonable.

A new fuser, 128MB in 16bit 32MB DIMMS, and a duplex unit courtesy of eBay brought the printer up to where we could use it for a lot of our bulk printing needs.

Now that our office systems are on Windows 7, there was no time since the upgrade to get the LaserJet 5Si connected to them since the OS does not have a built-in driver for it.

To boot, the product page for the LaserJet 5Si has no information on Windows 7 driver compatibility.

Jump up a few generations in the product line to the LaserJet 8150 product page and we see a different story:

The links to the Universal Print Driver are provided.

Here is what we need to do:

1. Download and save the HP LaserJet Universal Print Driver (HP Support Search)
2. Double click on the downloaded file.
3. Uncheck the When done unzipping open: .\Install.exe.
• 
4. Choose a directory to unzip to.
5. Click the Unzip button.
6. Click Start –> Printers [Enter].
7. Right click and Add Printer.
8. Our LJ 5Si is network connected, so we are using the Add a local printer option.
9. Create a new Standard TCP/IP Port and Next.
10. Type the IP address of the printer 192.168.40.5 (your printer’s IP) and click Next.
11. At the Install the printer driver window click the Have Disk button and navigate to the unzipped HP Universal Print Driver folder.
• 
12. Choose the PCL version and click Next.
13. Name the printer and click Next.
14. Choose to share or not.
15. Set as Default, or not, and click Finish.
• A test page will confirm that everything is working as expected.

Now, once the printer has been installed, we need to make sure that the printer’s installed options are showing up as expected. Otherwise, we will not be able to duplex or pick up paper from an add-on paper tray.

1. Right click on the printer’s icon and click on Printer Properties.
2. Choose the Device Settings tab.
3. Verify that the correct options and paper types are set.

We have all of our printers in our workstations set to duplex by default to save on paper. To do that, after checking the printer options we click on the General tab and click on the Preferences button. There we will find the Print on both sides option to check.

We now have our old workhorse printer connected to our Windows 7 workstations.

BTW, this printer is still quite young at 267,691 pages printed since day 1 and actually somewhat comparable to the newer printers at 24 pages per minute!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

HP LaserJet 3390 MFP - Problem out of the box

We had a couple of HP LaserJet 3390 MFPs sitting on our floor for delivery.

The first one went out the door and came back within a day.

We talked to our supplier about that, and apparently they are seeing a batch of them come back now.

The problem is with a print defect every couple of inches on the page when printed simplex or duplex.

So, we are going to take to testing them, including the second one sitting on the floor, before sending them off to delivery.

That might explain why there was a steep discount on them from HP lately! ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

HP LaserJet Monitor - zsHP1020.exe CPU Maxxed

We received a call from a client's user who was onsite complaining about their system no longer responding.

While trying to print something, the print job was sent to the wrong printer and the system eventually froze.

When the system was brought into the shop, this is what we found:

zsHP1020.exe Processes

There were literally hundreds of this one process firing up on the sytem.

First, we needed to unplug the printer and then shutdown the print spooler service: net stop spooler [Enter] from Start-->Run.

This did not fix the issue though. The system remained relatively unresponsive. The processes refused to be shut down via the "End Process" in the Task Manager.

We ended up needing to clean out any reference to the 1018, 1020, and 1022n LaserJet printers installed on the system. With the Print Spooler service shut down:

1. Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Spool\
2. Delete any folders that contain zshp1020.exe et. al. executables
• Note that the "Spool" and "3" folders may also contain other print drivers ... so only remove those folders and files that are relevant to the offending HP one.
• Verify what other printers are installed on the system before removing anything.
3. In this case, we removed all folders and files that were relevant.
4. Start-->Run--> regedit [Enter]
5. Find: LaserJet
6. Delete only the folders that are relevant to the offending printer.
• In this case we removed any registry folder named 1018, 1020, and 1022n
7. Ignore the MRU (Most Recently Used) references
8. Ignore the USB referenced locations ... &*3a... etc.
9. Just delete the relevant HP LaserJet Printer named Folders!

Note that Safe Mode may be required for the above operation.

Once the \Spool directory and the registry are cleaned out, do a search for zsHP1020.exe and any others on the local hard drive including hidden and system folders. Either rename or send to the Recycle Bin the driver's folders found in this search.

Once the above steps have been taken, reboot the system, log into the user's profile, download the most recent driver for the printer, run the install routine, and plug in the printer when requested to do so.

Once the drivers have installed, run a test print out of Word or another program to make sure that everything is working. We were good to go from there.

References:

• Mojocode.com: Windows Terminal Server 2003 Crash Problems
• Some somewhat related advise from HP: HP Deskjet 1220c and HP Deskjet 1180c Professional Series Printer - Uninstalling the Printer Driver, Microsoft(R) Windows 2000, NT 4.0, and XP

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Product Review: HP ScanJet 5590 - Error 23

Not much to review. How is that?

Because we have had a dismal record with them. We are batting close to 80% fail rate on the ones we ordered - all within a short period of time.

Error 23 flashing on the display seems to be the common thread. That error indicates a lamp failure. Sometimes a power cycle will bring the unit online, in many cases it may take several. And, in some cases it may never come back. It seems to be a common problem with these scanners.

We have had our issues with HP product in the past. We will never install an HP optical drive in our systems. Ever! Talk about grief ... if it wasn't burning properly, it would constantly require firmware updates.

Just recently, we received an HP DVDRW drive that was seemingly labelled a Lite-On when we ordered it. We figured we would give it a chance. It would not read any of the TechNet DVDs. It was not a reliable burner. So, out the door it went ... into recycling.

Remember the USB duplex issues with the 2400 series LaserJets? Ouch! We began to cringe when we saw who was on the Call Display. :(

It was always a firmware related error code 42.Fxxx or something like that.

Those ones hurt as we sold a whole bunch of them when they first came out. Firmware after firmware update did not resolve the problems. HP even sent us replacements! And they too had the same problem!

In 99.9% of the cases we installed a network switch to split off the one network connection for the PC and printer. We then statically assigned an IP to the printer, and gave the person using it print and manage access. No one else on the network could print to it. That avoided whatever goof up in the firmware when it came to duplex a print job that came to the printer via USB. But, we had to go through a lot of pain before we figured that one out.

So, it is late, and the scan job that needed to get done, won't. The HP 5590 is just not cooperating. If our supplier won't RMA it, we will just write it off and send it off to recycling. :(

Looks like we will be moving over to Epson or another suitable replacement product for our scanning needs.

Any recommendations? We need ADF with duplex as we scan a lot of documentation for archival purposes.

Other than the driver issues on Windows Vista, HP seems to have done a decent job on the recent models of LaserJet and MFP printer units.

By the way, we did try HP's online support chat for the scanner. That did not work out too well either.

Ultimately, they seemingly have pointed to a "software problem". :8(

Yet another *sigh*

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.