HP color laser jet driver bull  

My printer driver works but installing windows 7 killed its ability to print in color.

I have done a rather quick search for this issue here but did not find this one so here goes...my story is long but hopefully useful to someone, as it fully describes my entire printer issue to date:

I have a 2 year old HP color laser jet 2605dn printer. When I had XP on my Dell C521 desktop PC, it worked fine and I got nice color and black/white prints without issue.

In the spring I installed Win7 Ultimate. In fact I had to first completely reformat the computer --with Dell on the phone, and then I took my new, properly registered copy of Win7 Ultimate, purchased from MS and started from scratch. Everything works fine... except the driver from that laser printer would not load from the original disk as it wont work for anything above XP. I downloaded a driver but it failed. The message was a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it and it wanted me to do some troubleshooting. For more help I was prompted to contact HP. I restarted my machine and, well, my bad driver was still in my printers control panel but a new one was now present with a green check mark next to it, clearly indicating that it worked. And it did. I then removed my bad one and forgot about the problem for a while.

The new one was apparently installed automatically via Windows7 and it did so because the printer is hooked up with its USB cable. My bad one was, I thought, not the right driver or something like that.

I later learned, however, that the new one worked just great except for one thing: no color. No option to even print color! And no settings to change to make such an option exist. I could print, but not in color. I had not needed to until recently but now that I do I kinda want my printer to fully operate as planned. Besides, the 3 color ink cartridges are at least 1/2 full and they run a pretty penny. Other than using this thing to print, it has not moved since the day I bought it. It should still be working, right?

I found a number to contact HP the other day (877-517-4578) and you do actually get right through to someone (even though his name will be something like Rashad and it's hard to understand his fast talk).

I asked him about my problem and expected to be directed to the right driver. I assumed I merely downloaded the wrong one or there was some new update to know of or something. I had gone through HP's windows to download this file:

HP Universal Print Driver PCL6 v5.1.0.1

I opened it and it unpacked itself to a folder in my C drive. Installing it created the errored 'troubleshoot needed' driver on several occasions, all of which prompted me to remove the bad driver and start over. I still retained the one that Windows must have made, for it works, but I would disable it and let the install make its new attempt from HPs site and its use of Windows Update online. But in every case, I was unable to print. In at least one case I could see the color selection I desired, but I could not use it. In most other cases, the print dialogs wouldn't even open or didn't even exist so as to let me see squat. All i knew is that this driver looked right but maybe it was not right. I hoped the bloke from HP could help.

At first he seemed to be able to. he strung me along, however, because I soon found myself in a quagmire of service and tech babble that led to one thing and one thing only: I gotta pay to see. And, it's not just a little pocket change... no, HP would require you to sign up for a 1 year service plan that, while it would claim to solve all kinds of issues that MUST be wrong with MY system (thereby causing the driver to fail, according to him) was going to cost me like $169!

He then claimed that the driver is fine but my system needs troubleshooting because it's a 4 year old computer and that's a 2 year old printer. Maybe so, I said, but I also just tried this same procedure on my 4 month old Asus Eee PC 1005HAB laptop and the same thing happened. It's got nothing to do with age. It's got nothing to do with conflicts between new drivers and older systems, and it aint my computer because I use the latest of everything and it's been optimized and cleaned and this and that by people who probably have more tech skills than he does. I still think it's the driver--that is, if I even have the right one! (He refused to tell me what the driver name actually is) and I think the driver should work and that HP should make a product that adheres to peoples computers, not the other way around.

Feeling hijacked I hung up and decided that unless I could fix it myself I should, on principle above all else, consider a new printer from some other maker.

That said, anyone here have any experience with HP or any ideas on how to fix this issue? Otherwise I guess it's soon to be shopping time.

Thank you,

MM

Thank you all so far for your assistance in finding things and offering up ideas. I appreciate that!

However, I did neglect to mention the following:

I had originally found the driver I thought I needed in the HP support center (business--even though I am just an individual) and I did download from the HP site--the same site many posts here direct me to visit. Thus, links that have been provided lead me the very place I got my driver I have now.

When preparing to download, one is presented with information about the driver and also the postscript option, which wont work for me.

On the screen about the driver download, an option/selection called:

HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PCL6

reveals the downloadable driver that is offered, and it gives me:

upd-5101-pcl6_winxp-vista

which unpacks to the driver folder in my C drive I already have named in my above story.

It simply does not work--on my new or old PC, no matter how many times I have tried it so far. It installs, it shows up in my printer control panel, and it has the color option, but the driver has errors marked by the yellow triangle symbol. It is this that makes my HP techie rub his hands together knowing he can try to extract money from me.

If there is indeed some troubleshooting to be done, I would have to either pay these HP scammers to get something that should work anyway, or get lucky and figure out what could be conflicting with it. But nothing else conflicts with any driver I use in Win 7--believe me I have fixed them all or gotten much easier support from software companies than HP is willing to provide. But since Windows 7 Compatability page even directs people to the HP site and no where else, I am possibly running into a serious blocker here. HP has, in fact, found a rather ingenious way to both churn a profit and convince people the problem was all theirs and not HP's. Why then, I ask, do so many people have this same issue? (the guy told me he gets 20+ calls about this exact thing every day) Maybe there's something wrong with the driver and/or there's an easy setting that can be applied that serves as an acceptable workaround! (PS: I already found that the method for plugging in the printer and letting windows recognize new software works, but does not give me the driver that works for color printing.)

Further thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you,

MM :)

1Bowtie said:

Did you put the driver in, in compatibility mode using the option Vista compatibility. When Windows 7 came out HP had a year to get ready and didn't, i've got a $300 hp printer 4 years old and no drivers, you just have to be com and find workarounds.

Yeah HP did not get ready but they do not care.
My printer came with a drivers and install disk but it only works for win XP, as I stated earlier. The Win 7 driver I have been trying to install is for 3 2600 printers, which I find strange, but it does look like it is the right one. Nevertheless, it doesn't work and they are not taking responsibility for that at all. I find that to be rather rude.

I will continue to seek out workarounds (why I am on this forum) but what's a "com?"

thank you