HP color laser jet driver bull  

Hey, this appeared in another sevenforums post:

I had trouble installing a Windows 7 64-bit driver for my HP 2605dn printer, and couldn't easily find a solution googling it. Here is what I finally did to get it working.

After selecting add a new printer, then selecting the 2605dn, I didn't see this model in the HP printer list. But if I clicked the Windows update button then it showed up and installed fine.

However, to get duplex printing to work I had to right click the printer and select Printer Properties, then Device settings and installable options, then select duplex unit installed.

Com as in stay com, stay cool help is comeing:)

If I understand your problem description, you're getting only black from your color laserjet 2605dn.

I have faced this problem in the past (for my own 2605dn), both on WinXP and also Win7. Mostly, it was only for the PCL6 driver but interestingly I've also seen it on the PS600 driver.

Anyway, the problem is clearly a bug in the HP driver, but it can easily be overcome.


The proper drivers for the 2605dn for ALL environments can be obtained starting from this page.

(1) Win7 64-bit Universal Printer drivers (PCL6, PS600 and PCL5) can be obtained from this page.

(2) Win7 32-bit Universal Printer drivers (PCL6, PS600) can be obtained from this page.

(3) WinXP 32-bit Universal Printer drivers (PCL6, PS600) can be obtained from this page.

To install additional 32-bit support (for 32-bit client machines, like 32-bit WinXP or 32-bit Win7) for a "shared" 2605dn printer locally USB-attached on a 64-bit Win7 system (for which primary local 64-bit 2605dn printer support has already been installed by running the self-expanding 64-bit Win7 Universal Printer driver file from above) download the 32-bit Win7 Universal Printer driver but do not run it. Instead just unpack it (e.g. using WinRAR) into its expanded directory. Then use the "Additional Drivers" dialog for the already-installed 64-bit printer object for the 2605dn (from the Printer Properties dialog, Sharing tab), to navigate to the expanded directory for the Win7 32-bit Universal Printer driver and select the "hpcu112c.inf" driver file there. The rest is automatic.


Have the 2605dn powered on.

I am going to assume you have installed the very latest "Universal Printing" drivers from the HP site. These are the version 5.2 (build 9321) driver installation files (for example, upd-PCL6-X64-5_2_6_9321.exe is the self-expanding installer for 64-bit PCL6 driver file). If you don't have these "Universal Printing" drivers installed, then uninstall whatever you do have installed and download/run these. They are what you want, be it for PCL6 or PS600 (or even PCL5 which is available for Win7).

Note that there are 4 different Universal Printer self-installing driver files total for Win7 to download from the Win7 HP page for the 2605dn: 32-bit and 64-bit versions each, for both PCL6 and PS600. And there are similarly multiple versions on the WinXP Universal Printer driver download page for the 2605dn. But it is definitely these self-expanding, self-installing Universal Printer driver files that you want.


The self-expanded directory that results from these has an INSTALL.EXE inside of it, if you ever need to install those drivers again or in another reinstall of Win7. But this INSTALL.EXE will self-run from the self-expanding driver EXE file after doing the un-zip.

Just follow the Wizard that results from the INSTALL.EXE, and your drivers will get installed. Follow the "local printer" dialog path, and select the USB001 port. The rest is automatic and non-eventful. The printer object will then appear in Win7's list of printers.


Ok... as to your color vs. black problem.

Start -> Devices and Printers -> right-click on the newly installed printer object for the 2605dn. Then select the Printer Properties item from the popup menu.

If you have multiple drivers installed (e.g. both PCL6 and PS600) then the Printer Properties and Printer Preferences dialogs will provide a secondary selector, to choose which driver you're wanting to configure.

Note that right after installing these drivers, when you go to Devices and Printers it looks like you have separate printer objects for both PCL6 and PS600 (one of which you've selected as your default). But if you close down Devices and Printers, maybe a little later (or certainly after a re-boot) if you repeat that process Win7 has now consolidated the two different drivers into a single printer object.

That means when you now Start -> Devices and Printers -> right-click, you will now see that secondary sub-selector choice I mentioned above for both Printer Preferences and Printer Properties, where you'll have to select which of the two drivers you want to get into and configure.




Ok... select Printer Properties for the printer driver (you may need to do this for both PCL6 and PS600, separately of course). This will trigger the "HP Universal Printing PS (5.2) Properties" dialog (for example).

Select the Device Settings tab. Scroll down to the very last item in the list of device settings... "Device Type". It will no doubt say "auto detect" which is its default value after a driver install. THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!!

It's an HP driver bug (if you ask me), but the "auto detect" setting actually results in "monochrome" functionality (i.e. black and white only, as if the "MONOCHROME" value had been selected). This is why you're seeing black and white and no color... because the default "auto detect" results in "monochrome" (black and white) functional results.

However you can easily overcome this problem by clicking on the dropdown arrow for "device type" and instead selecting "COLOR". Click on OK, and that's all there is to it.

You now have a color-enabled 2605dn printer.

You should do this for ALL of the drivers you install for the 2605dn. They ALL have "auto detect" as their default "device type" value (in Printer Properties -> Device Settings tab, scrolled down to the very last item). All the drivers should be manually set to "COLOR" for their "device type".




One more issue... in the "Printing Preferences" dialog for these printers, you'll see that ALL of the tabs which present a small image of a printed page show the page either in black-and-white or in color, corresponding to that "device type" setting over in Printer Properties I just discussed. You should now see a color version of that printed page, not black and white. That's proof positive that the printer is now a color printer.

However, you may also see a "water mark" with the word "NONE" diagonally splashed on that little image of the printed page (both color and black-and-white versions, you'll see the water mark of "NONE").

This is yet another defect, in my opinion, in the default settings for these HP drivers as first installed. It's crazy to see that, but that's what is delivered.

The solution here is to select the Effects tab on Printing Preferences dialog (again, after right-clicking on the 2605dn printer object you'll need to sub-select the right driver you want if you have multiple drivers installed for the 2605dn).

The Effects tab includes what gets used as that "water mark", and when you first look at this you'll see that by default it shows "[none]". However if you click on the dropdown arrow, you'll see that this particular "[none]" is actually at the bottom of a list of five built-in choices for a driver-inserted watermark. It actually is TEXT spelled out "none".

But up at the top of the list, in the first position, is ANOTHER item also shown as "[none]". Could this be more confusing to the user?

Anyway, the first item in the watermark list actually means "NONE... I don't want any watermark". So select that first item (which of course, will still appear as "[none]" when you OK, so you really can't tell the difference).

Now, notice that the "NONE" watermark has indeed instantly disappeared from the small page image. And now you will no longer get the big word "NONE" printed diagonally on all of your printed output.

Again, repeat this "[none]" correction on the Effects tab of the other printer driver you've installed for the 2605dn, if you've installed both PCL6 and PS600.




Hope this solves your problem.

Incidentally, I have also successfully installed the 32-bit versions of each of the PCL6 and PS600 drivers on my Win7 system (i.e. both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers are installed in the two printer driver groups, for PCL6 and PS600).

This is done using the "Additional Drivers" dialog on the "Sharing" tab of "Printer Properties"... when you have both 32-bit (e.g. WinXP) and 64-bit (e.g. Win7) systems on your home network and want to "share" the printer hosted by the Win7 machine with other machines on the network. They will print to the 2605dn through the Win7 host for the 2605dn, to which it is locally USB-connected, by virtue of selecting "share this printer" in the Win7 setup for the printer.

Then, on the network client machines (e.g. my WinXP machines) you use Network to view the shareable devices on the other network machines, and because "share" was specified for the 2605dn on the local host Win7 system it shows up as a network object to the WinXP machine (just like hard drives that you can share and provide access to other systems on the network).

On the WinXP machine you right-click on that shared 2605dn printer object in the Network view, and then select "connect" from the popup menu. WinXP will communicate with Win7, to set up this printing connection. Win7 will ship down the 32-bit driver (which I'd previously installed on Win7 as the second driver, using "Additional Drivers") to WinXP, and WinXP will now complete the creation of the printer object.

So you have a printer object on WinXP that represents the "shared" 2605dn on the Win7 machine. Win7 has its own 64-bit version of the printer driver for its own local 64-bit use, and WinXP has been shipped a copy of the previously installed [second] 32-bit version of the driver... for 32-bit client use.

Magic. Works perfectly! You have to do essentially nothing on the WinXP client machine to make this work, other than to "connect".

But you do need to install the 32-bit driver for the 2605dn using the "Additional Drivers" dialog on the Win7 system. And this is the 32-bit version of the Win7 Universal Printer driver package that you downloaded, but did not actually INSTALL... meaning you didn't actually run it. Instead, you simply use WINZIP or WINRAR or whatever, to expand that self-extracting EXE for the driver file from HP... into the a folder of the same directory name that it would have self-expanded into if you'd RUN it.

The reason for this is that the "Additional Drivers" dialog of Win7 requires that the additional driver (e.g. x86 in this case) to be installed be provided in INF form, not some self-installing INSTALL.EXE form. This is fine, however, as the expanded directory just produced by using WINRAR on the self-extracting EXE driver file from the HP Win7 site for the 2605dn actually DOES also store the needed INF file where "Additional Drivers" can use it from.

This INF file for the 2605dn is named hpcu112c.inf (located in the same directory in which the INSTALL.EXE is also found, if you really wanted to install that driver as a PRIMARY driver for Win7) and is what you point to in the "Additional Drivers" dialog as the secondary driver to be installed.

In other words, hpcu112c.inf in the expanded directory resulting from the 32-bit version of the Universal Printer driver, is the very "additional driver" you want to point to using the "Additional Drivers" dialog specified to add "x86" support to the printer for which you already have RUN the 64-bit version of the same HP-provided driver to get your first primary 64-bit (x64) driver installed.

If you do this correctly you will now see both x64 and x86 shown as "yes" for that printer, on the Printer Properties dialog for the printer, after pushing the "Additional Drivers" dialog. Originally x64 was shown as "yes" and x86" was shown as "no", after running the 64-bit version of the driver installer file. And then after expanding the 32-bit driver file, and using "Additional Drivers" to check the x86 item and then navigate to the expanded directory for the 32-bit driver and selecting hpcu112c.inf as the driver in that directory, you will then be installing the 32-bit driver as a second driver for that printer. You now have both 64-bit and 32-bit drivers available for client machines to be shipped, when they "connect" to make use of the "shared" 2605dn on the host Win7 machine.