[rubble2]

Wonder if anyone can shed any light on this for me please?

I have two HP printers on my PC (XP) My default printer is an HP laserjet and the other is a cheap HP all in one which is used exclusively for scanning.

I printed a photo today on the laserjet and the colours looked a bit off so I thought I had better check the levels of the toner cartridges. There is software called laserjet toolbox that allows you to see the consumable levels on the monitor, but when I looked for it in the program list there is no mention of the laserjet printer at all.

I then looked in control panel and again there is no mention of the laserjet driver, only the all in one printer.

I downloaded the driver from the HP website but when I try to open it it gets to 100% then a dialog box comes up that says :- setup.exe - cannot initialise resources.

I then reverted to the driver on CD that came with the printer and get the same setup.exe message on that.

I must stress that the printer is working fine but I cannot even uninstall the driver to reinstall it as the driver doesn't appear in add/remove programs in control panel.

Any suggestions?

[chrisjr]

Drivers don't necessarily appear in Add-Remove programs. Look in Device Manager under Printers.

Right click on any entries in there and select Uninstall. Then shut down the PC. Unplug the all in one device so only the laser jet is connected. Then start up the PC. If you are lucky it will find the printer and pop up the found new hardware wizard which you can either use to install the drivers or kill to use the software install you have.

Hopefully that will sort it and you can reconnect the all in one and repeat the driver install for that and get them both working together again.

[rubble2]

Thanks Chris,

I am happy to try your suggestion but am a bit wary of deleting the driver and not being able to re-install it again if the setup.exe problem persists

[coachtrip_fan99]

Originally Posted by rubble2

Thanks Chris,

I am happy to try your suggestion but am a bit wary of deleting the driver and not being able to re-install it again if the setup.exe problem persists

if you delete it out of the device manager, it should automatically come back up when you connect the printer.

the driver will still be stored on the system somewhere.

[chrisjr]

It is something I do very often with Windows PCs and it is very rare that it causes serious problems. Most of the time windows twigs that a device is attached and just gets on with installing a driver. Only if it is some obscure bit of hardware are you likely to run into problems. And I would not describe HP printers as anything like obscure

At worst it will install a generic HP driver that will at least get you printing. It should be then possible to update it with the latest version from the HP website. Though just be careful that you don't download a Windows Vista or Windows 7 only driver as they will possibly not work with XP. That is something you have to be wary of and sometimes it's none too obvious what actual driver you need. Though I think HP are not as bad as some manufacturers I've seen.

[rubble2]

OK,

Slightly confused now, I have just looked in Device Manager as suggested and the only listings are as follows:-

IEEE 1284.4 Compatible Printers - lists the All in one printer

IEEE 1284.4 Devices - lists the all in one printer

Imaging Devices -lists the all in one printer

There is no mention of the Laser printer anywhere in device manager although when I look in Control Panel under printers it is there and is ticked as the default printer.

What do you think?

[rubble2]

Update,

Did some googling and found that I needed to 'show hidden devices' in Device manager.

I could then see the laserjet printer so I deleted it from device manager, restarted the PC and my worst fears came true, no laserjet printer and when the dialog box came up saying new hardware found it couldn't complete the installation - so no printer.

Tried running the downloaded driver and the driver from CD both came up with the setup.exe fault mentioned earler.

As a last resort did a system restore which got the printer back working but still missing access to the software from the program list - so back to square one

[chrisjr]

Did you delete the other printer as well? It could be there is some strange conflict going on between the two devices.

I would be tempted to first off create your own restore point so you can at least go back to the current state if it all goes pear shaped. Then unplug BOTH printers and delete them both from Device Manager. Reboot so that there is no chance of any remnants of the drivers lurking in memory (hopefully). Then perhaps run the Registry cleaner part of CCleaner to clear out any redundant registry entries for the printers. It shouldn't really be necessary but you never know.

Then plug the Laserjet in by itself and see if the drivers install correctly this time. If they do then try updating them and if that works OK then try plugging the all in one device in and letting that install.

If everything goes to plan it ought to sort itself out. But at least if you have a working restore point to go back to you will at least be no worse off then you are now.

If that all fails miserably then something is broken somewhere. If it were on of the PCs I have here at work the solution would be simple. Just plug it into the network and re-image it. That usually sorts out problems that won't otherwise go away. But I can understand why you might not find zapping your PC and re-installing Windows and all the other stuff that attractive a prospect.

Unfortunately it does sometimes happen though that Windows gets it's knickers so well and truly twisted that hitting it with a big stick is the only option.