HP 648C Printer Trouble

[Guest]

I had several workstations running Windows ME that had HP 648C's connected to
them. These workstations were recently replaced with new machines running XP.
Since changing to XP, we have had numerous problems with the printers. I've
updated to the XP drivers, tried parallel and USB connections and nothing
seems to work. I hate to scrap these printers as they are not very old. Any
ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Kevin]

Have you uninstalled the printers and then reinstalled them, from scratch?
What is happening with the printers? Error messages? Printers not
recognized by Windows?

 

[Guest]

Yes, I have re-installed from scratch. The printers will give errors like
(Out of Paper" sometimes, but typically just blinks the orange indicator
light and fails to do anything.

 

[wayne]

maybe if you told us what the actual problem was we could provide an answer?

 

[Alex Nichol]

Yes, I have re-installed from scratch. The printers will give errors like
(Out of Paper" sometimes, but typically just blinks the orange indicator
light and fails to do anything.

You should not try to use old HP drivers. Remove the printer totally
(in Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager, you will need
View set to show hidden devices) look for it, double click, look on
Drivers page - Driver details for the hp files that may have been
installed, and note them. Then use Action remove. Then delete those
files from System32\drivers.

Shut down and Unplug the printers. Power the printers on, boot the
machine and only *then* connect the USB cables. 'hot'. This should
bring up New Hardware and install the native XP drivers for Deskjets -
they do not have all the bells and whistles the HP drivers for former
systems had, but they print perfectly well
,