Chris Hansen’s blog

I have been having difficulty installing an old HP Laserjet 4P printer on my computers here. The old Dell computer does not have a parallel port, so I tried several things. An HP printer server never worked right. A parallel to USB cable also never worked right. A Bluetooth adapter for a parallel port worked, but it made it difficult if not impossible to install the printer onto the computer. When I asked Bluetooth to find the printer, it reported the printer’s name as “UNKNOWUNKNOW”. Whatever I did, I couldn’t get it to find the printer as “HP Laserjet 4P”. Of course, the disks I had to install it were 3-1/2″ floppies, and I have no easy way to load them onto the computer.

So, step 1 was to swear a lot. Step 2 was to download the Windows 7 drivers from the HP website. Step 3 was to try to get the driver installer to find those drivers. Uh-uh. No dice. Nada. Nihil. Rien.

Step 4 was: repeat Step 1.

I then had a brainwave. Step 5: I edited the .inf file, deleted all the references to printers in the first part of the file except for the Laserjet 4P reference. I changed the name of this reference to “UNKNOWUNKNOW” and saved the file. I then right-clicked on the printer in the Bluetooth window, chose “Properties”, highlighted “UNKNOWUNKNOW” and chose “Properties” at the lower right hand corner, then “Change Settings” on the window that opened. This allowed me to update the driver, and when prompted I chose the .inf file. It then found the right driver from the file and installed it. I changed the name of the printer to “HP Laserjet 4P” and printed a test page. Voilá! There it was.

Now I’ve fallen somewhat behind on hardware. The days in the mid-1980’s when I had to manually plug memory chips into a circuit board are long gone. Putting together my own computer is now quite difficult; my current computer was put together by our friend BK in Singapore and I don’t believe I could do it now, at least not easily. But I’m grateful that I’m a software tester at heart, and able to keep plugging away at a problem until I’ve cracked it.

Why would I want an ancient Laserjet on my system? It’s very easy to feed envelopes into it, that’s why. To feed envelopes into the Photosmart I have to take out the tray, remove the paper, put in one envelope, close it up again, and print. The Laserjet has a slot in the front and a switch at the back which allows an envelope to pass through flat. It also works quite well for sheets of laser labels, which should not be allowed to bend in the printer as labels can become detached and end up on the laser drum.

I feel very accomplished. Next step: get the Photosmart’s scanner to pass through the firewall.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 at 03:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.