Internet Explorer uses the Windows standard print dialog, whereas MS Office
(e.g. Outlook) does not (the MS Office team decided to provide their own
print dialog). There are subtle differences in the way these dialogs behave
that sometimes makes one work and the other not when there are printer
driver related "issues", which may be at least partly what you are
observing.
Here's a suggestion that might help your situation. I'm assuming that the
printer is on a parallel port (e.g. LPT1). Please be aware that none of
this is guaranteed to work; its a suggestion that might work in your
situation based on past experience and information gathered from other posts
on this and other newsgroups.
1. power off the printer
2. do all the steps (1 through 13) at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm
3. open a Windows Explorer window and navigate to %systemroot%\inf (usually
c:\windows\inf)
4. scroll down until you see the files that start with oem
5. open each oem*.inf file one a time (double click should open it in
Notepad, or right click and select Open With...) and see if it relates to an
HP Deskjet printer. There is usually a comment inside the file that says
what model(s) of printer (or other type of device) it pertains to. When you
find one that relates to an HP Deskjet printer, delete it and any .pnf file
with the same name. Among other things, these .inf files are used when XP
detects a "new printer" on the parallel port. If the .inf file is for a
driver that is not XP compatible, this can cause problems.
6. restart windows XP
7. In Computer Management, System Tools, Device Manager, under Ports, right
click on the Printer Port (LPTn) and select Properties. Remove the check
mark (if there is one) from Enable legacy Plug and Play detection; click OK
8. Start the Add Printer Wizard; make sure that there is no check mark
beside Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer"; click
Next
9. select the appropriate port; click Next
10. select the printer driver for your particular model of HP Deskjet, if it
is in the list. If not, visit
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/eng/software_drivers.html and download the
Windows XP version of the driver for your particular printer
11. complete the Add Printer wizard
12. power on the printer
There are quite a few HP Deskjet printers of varying vintage. The drivers
for some models are very similar to those for some other models and some are
quite different. Exactly how the driver behaves can vary considerably from
one model to another. For some models, you may have to power on the
printer before installing the printer driver (step 8).
With some models, the automatic detection of the printer and the
installation of the printer driver work correctly, so after cleaning up the
drivers and the oem*.inf files (step 5), you may find that powering on the
printer and restarting XP will correctly install the driver.
Hopefully, you will be good to go; I don't think you should need to restart
XP to use the printer at this point. When you do restart, there is a
possibility that XP will detect the printer as "new hardware". Why this is
is a bit of mystery, but many people have reported that XP finds "new
hardware" when a printer (some models) are connected to the parallel port.
If this happens, go right through the new hardware wizard - it should now
complete successfully. You may find that this happens again at the next
restart. I've had this happen and after some time (or some number of
restarts?) it no longer happened.
Please repost whether this works or not. I'm considering adding the steps
to clean up the oem*.inf files to the page at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm. They did help
someone else that had a problem similar to yours, so I'd be interested in
your experience with this also.
