ChasP505
8th of January 2009 (Thu), 02:46
Tonight I intended to print some 13 x 19 photos for a display at my company's annual sales convention. I have posted here recently how I just built a new PC (Windows XP Pro SP3) and everything went swimmingly. Well, this is the first time I used my HP B8350 printer to print photos from the new PC. I set up all the printing parameters, clicked on the Print button, and watched as nothing happened!
Historically, I had the same issue when I originally bought the printer and HP support sent me updated drivers which solved the problem. I installed the printer with these very same drivers, but had the same refusal to print anything but draft documents.
After some searching on Google I found the issue. When the Windows "XPS Essentials Pack" is installed, it updates the versions of two .dll files required by the HP driver software. So I had to locate these 2 updated files deep in the System32 directory, then find the original files in the Windows driver cache, and restore the original files. (I renamed the newer versions like "xyz.dll.old" in case I needed them again.) Once this was done, everything worked normally again.
This budget photo printer has gotten a bum rap because of the flaky software and drivers. But once it's working, it turns out superb prints and the cartridges seem to last an exceedingly long time.
Historically, I had the same issue when I originally bought the printer and HP support sent me updated drivers which solved the problem. I installed the printer with these very same drivers, but had the same refusal to print anything but draft documents.
After some searching on Google I found the issue. When the Windows "XPS Essentials Pack" is installed, it updates the versions of two .dll files required by the HP driver software. So I had to locate these 2 updated files deep in the System32 directory, then find the original files in the Windows driver cache, and restore the original files. (I renamed the newer versions like "xyz.dll.old" in case I needed them again.) Once this was done, everything worked normally again.
This budget photo printer has gotten a bum rap because of the flaky software and drivers. But once it's working, it turns out superb prints and the cartridges seem to last an exceedingly long time.