Vista Drivers for HP color laserjet 2500L

[Guest]

My HP color laserjet 2500L printer won't work on my new Vista PC - it prints
black and white. I tried downloading the Vista PCL5 and Postscript drivers
from the HP website but this didn't work. Is there a solution? Thank you.

 

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

Do a search here on [No Vista drivers for HP Color Laserjets] and you
should find a number of messages about using Compatibility mode and Run
as Administrator to achieve an installation which works using PCL 5 and
PCL 6.

But check the HP website since they are still releasing VISTA drivers
-- I saw about one just out for Deskjet 1300 series.

Here is the link:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?
lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=81959&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=81954&swLa
ng=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=2093

Make sure you follow instructions for USB connected printers (if yours
is) with the USB cable not connected to the printer or the PC and with
the Printer unplugged from power supply, not just turned off.

 

[Guest]

Thanks - I will try and let you know.

 

[Birk Binnard]

Reprinted from message below:

The following steps are what I discovered over about a 4 day period. My
system is Vista Home Premium and I have a LaserJet 2500 color printer. I
was previously running XP Home SP2 and I figured it would be easy to
move the LJ2500 over to my new Vista machine and still use the XP system
as a backup.

Needless to say moving the printer was the hardest part of migrating
from XP to Vista. I'll just list the steps needed to get the printer to
work.

1. Go to the HP website and download/install the Vista PCL6 driver. Here
is the link for that:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...iesId=81954&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=2093

2. Using the Control Panel/1Printer/Add Printer function, add your
printer. When you do this use the top option which says something like
"Use this option only if you have a non-USB printer..."; use this option
even if your printer is actually using a USB connection. For the printer
port specify either USB (if that's what you are using) or LPTx (if using
a parallel port.)

3. This should get your printer to print OK, but there will be 2
problems: (1) if the printer is a color one (the 2500 is a color
printer), your printer will print only B/W, and (2) the HP Status
Monitor software will not be able to communicate with the printer
because it (the software) needs to use something called a DOT4
connection, not a USB connection.

4. You need to install the DOT4 port to get the HP Status Monitor to
work. You can install this from the CD that originally came with your
printer but you have to run the Setup program in XP Compatibility mode.
To do this browse to the Setup.exe program on the CD, right click on
it, Select Options/Compatibility and specify Run in compatibility more
for Windows XP. This will let you install the printer (again); this
time use the DOT4 port that will be an option. However, it will have a
problem: it will be set to PCL5. This is not good.

5. You now have 2 printers installed. One is using PCL6 and a USB (or
parallel) port; the other is using PCL5 and the DOT4 port. Take a deep
breath and delete the PCL5/DOT4 printer. The go to the Properties/Ports
tab for the PCL6 printer and change the port to DOT4. This port type
was what you did Step 4 for; there is no place on the HP website where
you can download the DOT4 port driver.

6. Your printer should work OK and so should the HP Status Monitor. I
did a couple of reboots between several of these steps but I'm not sure
that's necessary.

Remember, the key is to get PCL6 and a DOT4 port in your printer's
configuration.

 

[Guest]

Wow! Thank you VERY much for all that information. I'm really beginning to
think that getting Vista was a bad idea - everything was working fine on my
old XP machine! I just seem to be wasting so much time. I did try
installing the HP PCL5 and PS printer drivers but they didn't worh, though I
didn't try the PCL6. Anyway, I've feeling a bit nervy about doing all the
things you suggest as I'm no techie, but I'll give it a go. Do you think HP
will release more/proper Vista drivers later? One again, a big thanks.

 

[Birk Binnard]

I know what you mean about second-guessing the decision to go to Vista.
In my case I opted for it because it was time to replace my old XP
machine and I fully expected to have problems. I certainly didn't want
to go with XP on my new system and then upgrade it to Vista.

Needless to say I was not disappointed with my anticipation of problems.
The HP one was the worst, but I had a couple others with things like
my Motorola cell phone, an old version of QuickBooks, and a couple of
similar issues. Since I've gone through this before (Windows 2/3/3.1,
XP) I decided beforehand not to let it get to me. Obviously this is
easier to say than do actually do.

As far as HP goes I agree it is sorely disappointing and totally
inexcusable that they messed this transition up so badly. Perhaps part
of the problem can be traced back to the re3cent management problems at
HP, but even that is no excuse in my book. Frankly I think many of the
companies we have learned to trust and respect have gone downhill fast
in terms of quality of service and appreciation for customer problems.

To answer your question it's not clear to me where the problem lies with
the HP drivers. The truth is all the required software pieces are there
(either in Vista or on the HP website); the problem is how they get
installed (or currently, not installed) when Vista first see the
printer. I don't know if this is a problem with firmware in the older
printers, or if it's some sort of bug in Vista.

The truth is it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that
currently no one at HP or MS seems to know about or care about the
problem. Until they do it won't get fixed.

 

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

 Do you think HP 
will release more/proper Vista drivers later?

According to their website they talk about continuing releases even up
to September for some of their highly industrial designjets.

They talk about July for fully featured drivers for the CLJ2600N that
has less than the CLJ2500L

 

[Guest]

Hello Birk,

I am also having the HP printer problem. I have an old PSC 1315
multifunction device and it worked for about a month.
Either it was either a HP or Vista upgrade 29 march 07 evening, and the
printer disappeared.
After that I finally got the scanner portion working, however the printer
does not appear.

The unidrv.dll worked well during March, as you related in your earlier
posting. However the install wizards do not seem to work together.

How do we manually install a USB printer with Vista??

Thanks.

 

[Birk Binnard]

Sounds like your device is an all-in-one which HP refers to as an AIO.
From what I've read the AIO driver is significantly different from the
regular printer ones. In fact I'm not even sure if AIOs use PCL.

All I know about getting HP printers recognized by Vista is in my post
above. But that might not work for you.