USB printer on network will not install  

Good Day Sirs and Madams:I am close to losing my mind as I get used to running Windows 7 x86 on a Windows Server 2008 x64 Network. Just wanted to share that and get it out of the way.Today's issue is that I have an HP Deskjet 952c printer connected to my server via a USB cable. My server doesn't have a parallel port for printers (It's a newer HP meant to be a desktop). I have the printer published in Active Directory from the print server role, and clients running XP Pro have no problems.I'm not sure what 7's problem is, but the normal solution; manually installing the driver, is proving impossible. HP's website insists that the driver is included with 7's plug and play and refuses to let me download the driver! Sure, the driver is probably in there, but 7 does not see that it needs it because the printer is not connected to the system. I cant even fix this issue from my server because the server's PnP hasnt downloaded the x86 driver since it is an x64 system!Google has failed me horribly as well....

Longshot but worth a try. Plug the printer directly into the USB port of your Windows 7 PC. It should load the drivers. Make sure it prints properly. Then connected to the server and hope for the best.

Snakeyeskm said:

Longshot but worth a try. Plug the printer directly into the USB port of your Windows 7 PC. It should load the drivers. Make sure it prints properly. Then connected to the server and hope for the best.

Yeah, I didn't really want to do that, since you can't always do it in the field. But I relented and gave it a shot. It worked but took some extra steps:The driver wasn't included in the Windows 7 x86 PnP like HP said, but the wizard did get it from Microsoft. It printed locally, but not from the server. But now I was able to find the driver on the 7 system since it was the newest item in the PnP folder. I used the print server to include it in the network driver database, and the printer worked from the 7 system if I logged in with a network account, but not if I logged on locally.In the end, and probably what would have worked in the first place for both a network logon or a local one, I granted some extra permissions to the system running 7, then viewed remote printers on the server from the network folder and installed the printer from there.That's how I would have done it awhile back, but you're not supposed to have to do it that way anymore.