HP 5550 on a NEW Dell XPS

[Owen Mortensen]

I'm having serious problems printing with my HP 5550 printer on my new Dell
XPS Gen 4 machine! Windows XP Professional.

I am pretty happy with HP tech support: they worked with me over 10 hours to
try and make the printer work: all to no avail. They did get it working with
the HP 550C driver, but that is not acceptable. The 550C printer is a much
less capable printer.

I am VERY UNHAPPY with Dell tech support (it's a frickin' NEW MACHINE for
Pete's sake!). They shuffled me around to different departments until the
printer department pretty much said: we didn't make the printer; tough luck.

AT ANY RATE, here's what's happening:

1) Print anything from anywhere (including a DOS prompt)
2) Printer picks up a piece of paper, chugs for a few seconds, then spits
out the blank piece of paper.

I can connect the printer to another machine I have (also running Windows
XP, but the machine is NOT A DELL) and it works perfectly.

Any ideas?
TIA,
Owen

 

[Kevin]

I'm guessing you've tried to print a test page with this printer hooked up
to the Dell? Is the printer found in the Printer Folder in Control Panel?
Is the printer even recognized by Windows? Now don't take this the wrong
way, but have you followed the HP installation instructions precisely,
absolutely and exactly? One tiny, itty bitty thing done wrong or in the
wrong order and all hell can break loose. Such as plugging in the USB cable
at the wrong moment. It happens. Just asking, thinking off the top of my
head here. Is this Dell running Windows XP SP2 by any chance?