HP Deskjet printer produces garbage characters!

[Chris Smith]

I have a new Dell P4 WinXP desktop computer and have been given an older HP
DeskJet printer. The printer, once installed yields only strings of garbage
characters. An internally derived, i.e. hard wired test page prints well but
printing attempts from the Dell continue to print endless pages of the
garbage characters!

I tried the printer on an older Win98 computer with good results. HP tech
support won't help as it's not their printer.
I tried using an XP driver for the printer found on HP's website with no
success!!

Can anyone help me get this printer to work please.

Thanks for any insight into this mess.

Chris Smith

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

1. Is it an HP printer? In one place you say it is, yet you say that HP
won't help you because it's NOT their printer????? Which is it!

2. Not all HP printers are Windows XP compatible!

3. The main information needed, you didn't supply. WHAT'S THE MODEL NUMBER?

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
1. Is it an HP printer? In one place you say it is, yet you say that HP
won't help you because it's NOT their printer????? Which is it!

2. Not all HP printers are Windows XP compatible!

3. The main information needed, you didn't supply. WHAT'S THE MODEL NUMBER?

been given an older
HP only strings of
garbage test page prints well
but

Printers are cheap.
.

 

[Chris Smith]

My mistake. The printer is an HP
DeskJet 930c. The computer is a Dell. Dell will not help with getting the HP
printer working on the Dell machine.

 

[Cari MS-MVP]

About 99% sure you have corrupted drivers.

See
http://www.coribright.com/windows/Article One.htm

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[J-McC]

Is it USB or parallel port. I have seen this before on a parallel
port where 1 of the data lines is stuck. If you can put in a dos disk
6.22 or win98se and boot to dos. Then try this
Dir /w >lpt1:
and see if you get proper text, if you do then it is a windows problem
else if you get garbage that may show a repeating pattern then it may
be a stuck data pin (hardware fault). On the old p/cs one would
simply change the multi i/o card.
I am assuming that it is an older HP printer. Some of their later
ones used the p/c to convert the data to a format the printer can
understand. I just cannot remember what it was called but it was all
the rage a few years back. At that stage HP hadnot follewed suit and
went to great pains to show how processor dependant it made printing
and that they would never do this but I think the HP720C is one that
requires software to make it print.
Jim McCardle
(e-mail address removed)