printer install issues  

WebFoot said:

Reinstall complete. As far as auto install drivers when first plugged in, didn't go exactly as described it would. During the install it went out to Windows Update and installed the same drivers as I initially had.

This still baffles me. That PPD you named is also physically in my own Driver Repository (from base Win7), but has nothing to do with the 2605dn printer neither PCL6 nor PS. It's for some other Officejet or Inkjet printer, if my analysis is correct.

Can you actually print a test page with that printer??

Can you please post a screenshot of the "ABOUT" page for that printer?

Anyway, as long as you've specified the 5.8.0.17508 "PS" printer as your default, you'll be fine. You can just permanently ignore the PCL6 printer as well as whatever it was that got auto-installed when you first powered the printer on and plugged it in. The PS printer will work for everything you send to it.

Next DL'd the 2 driver packages on the HP site and made sure they were set up for using USB001 port. Rest of install went well and I now can see all 3 driver sets. As long as I select either of the 5.8.0 drivers, all looks like the screen shots dsperber posted.

Good.

Did you set the "duplex" setting to INSTALLED? Did you change the "device type" setting to COLOR?

Think I've gone as far as I can go on the install. Only thing left is after I install the additional memory later this week.

Anything else I need to do?

If you can print a test page and the MS graphic is in color, you're done.

If you want duplex printing to be your default, don't forget to go into "printing preferences" ("Finishing" tab) and set it to "print on both sides" (along with "portrait mode" presumably). Note that if/when you might print something in landscape mode on both sides of the paper, you should also check the "flip pages up" box to get the landscape-mode duplexing along the long edge of the paper, rather than along the short edge.

Final point, just in case this is your first laserjet printer. You should use proper "laserjet paper", not "inkjet paper". It's smoother and whiter and is different because of the powdered ink toner used for a laserjet printer. I use "98 bright" and "24 lb." paper from Mohawk ("color copy") and it produces beautiful printed output both B&W and color. I buy it at my local Kelly Paper store, but you can probably find it elsewhere and online at good prices (but don't forget shipping charge).

Also, although it's more expensive for sure, I only use true genuine HP toner cartridges. I once tried a much less expensive "compatible" (recharge or whatever) from some ink supply place and it was awful. I was thankful it didn't cause any physical damage to my printer. Anyway, once was enough, and never again. Just use true original genuine HP toner is my recommendation.

dsperber said:

This still baffles me. That PPD you named is also physically in my own Driver Repository (from base Win7), but has nothing to do with the 2605dn printer neither PCL6 nor PS. It's for some other Officejet or Inkjet printer, if my analysis is correct.

Can you actually print a test page with that printer??

Can you please post a screenshot of the "ABOUT" page for that printer?

That driver set may be for something else but as you can see, it is titled for the various 2605 models. Have been printing from that driver for 4-5 days without any real problems.

Including 3 shots from the ABOUT pg so you can see most of the various drivers included. Lastly included a copy of a scan I made from a printout using that first driver set. As I've said before, very pleased with the color output.

WebFoot said:

That driver set may be for something else but as you can see, it is titled for the various 2605 models. Have been printing from that driver for 4-5 days without any real problems.

Well not to belabor this mystery, but I'm really puzzled.

The HPMCPD25.PPD file you show is actually for a PS printer, not a PCL printer as I was thinking. I'm really amazed that the Windows auto-install when you power on that 2605dn for the first time causes your Windows to auto-install a PS printer driver instead of a PCL printer driver.

Furthermore, on my Windows system the HPMCPD25.PPD file is located in:

"C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_prnhp002.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_2f4e6f72537f8faa\Amd64\HP MCPD25.PPD"

And PRNHP002.INF is not for a 2605 (or 2600 series) laserjet printer. It is for other HP printers, not the 2605 laserjet. In fact, PRNHP002.INF shows that HPMCPD25.PPD is the PS definition for:

"HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS" = hpmcpd25.ppd

All in all, I have no idea at all how or why this PS printer driver got installed on your system, and how it ends up appearing as a 2605 type printer when there's nothing in my versions of the files you show in your ABOUT screenshots which provides the title information shown in your ABOUT.

I'm stumped to explain what you have for that auto-installed printer driver.

3 shots from the ABOUT pg so you can see most of the various drivers included.

We can't really compare apples to oranges. My auto-install printer is PCL6. Yours is for PS.

I give up. And besides, we're not using that printer but rather are using the 5.8.0.17508 PS printer as the default... at least I assume you are, same as me.

Lastly included a copy of a scan I made from a printout using that first driver set. As I've said before, very pleased with the color output.

Wait... you printed a digital picture you'd taken with your camera (JPG or some other image format) on the 2605dn? And then you scanned that print back into your computer as a JPG? And this picture you're now posting is that SECOND JPG produced from a scan of a paper printout on the 2605dn of a camera-produced JPG?

I find that remarkable, honestly, because the picture you've attached here looks like the original JPG... and doesn't seem possible to be a second-generation JPG from a scan-from-paper-printout on a 2605dn (which is not a photo printer, but an ordinary laserjet color printer) of a first-generation JPG. Color in your JPG as well as other detail is simply TOO GOOD TO BE A SCAN FROM A LASERJET PRINTER (as opposed to say being a scan from a photo printer, on glossy photo paper).

In other words, the photo you've attached is SUPERB! Looks like the original from the camera, not the "round-the-horn" version produced by the multi-step process involving printing on the 2605dn and then scanning that printout back into a JPG.

Are you sure you've attached that second-generation JPG, and not the original first-generation camera-produced shot?? Sure looks like the original to me. Looks like a true original digital photo.

dsperber said:

....
I find that remarkable, honestly, because the picture you've attached here looks like the original JPG... and doesn't seem possible to be a second-generation JPG from a scan-from-paper-printout on a 2605dn (which is not a photo printer, but an ordinary laserjet color printer) of a first-generation JPG. Color in your JPG as well as other detail is simply TOO GOOD TO BE A SCAN FROM A LASERJET PRINTER (as opposed to say being a scan from a photo printer, on glossy photo paper).

In other words, the photo you've attached is SUPERB! Looks like the original from the camera, not the "round-the-horn" version produced by the multi-step process involving printing on the 2605dn and then scanning that printout back into a JPG.

Are you sure you've attached that second-generation JPG, and not the original first-generation camera-produced shot?? Sure looks like the original to me. Looks like a true original digital photo.

That's right, a scanned image from the output of this printer. Here is another scanned print. It is of a card the wife made several yrs ago. Typ graphic you'd expect to see from this kind of application but it also contains 3 photo images. This is more typ of how this printer is going to be used. Both this and the prior attachment were printed last Thurs-Fri.

As I've said before, I'm very impressed with the output of this printer. Son was also impressed with the output and he is an Eng at HP's inkjet Div.

What type of paper are you using? I know the printed result often depends on the quality of the JPG/raw original photo you're printing, but I'm very impressed.

I recently used my 2605dn to print a "knife collection memoir book" for my cousin (actually contained in two WORD documents, which are limited in size to a max of 512MB), which included 100 full-page color images of his knives. The pictures themselves had been produced by SCANNING (at 600DPI, to TIFF) on a Canon MP990 all-in-one printer/scanner/FAX, the knives being placed over the glass and then just closing the top cover over them as best as possible. The 2605dn output was duplexed, to give them a "working copy" to look at. I was actually very impressed with the results out of the 2605dn for most of those 100 "plates" (printed on that "98 bright" 24-lb. Mohawk color copy paper I mentioned earlier)... as compared to how the original/cropped TIFF scans looked vs. how they looked as pages in the WORD document (which were actually pretty much identical to how they looked in the original TIFF form). Obviously the WORD document was HUGE (hence why it had to be split in two) because they had produced the book by dropping in those huge TIFF's in their original form.

NOTE: it was because of the HUGE sizes of some of these pages (which were actually HUGE TIFF images in the WORD document) that I needed to buy the additional 256MB so that the 2605dn could even print these pages... two pages at a time if need be (since I wanted duplex output)!!

Anyway, I then also printed each of the 100 "plate" pages on my Canon Pro9000 photo printer, using Canon "Photo Platinum" glossy paper (and highest-quality print settings), and printed the other non-image pages one-sided (simplex) on the 2605dn, so that they could insert the glossy photo "plate" pages where they belonged. I let all of the 100 "plate" pages dry (spread out on the floor) for 24 hours, which truly makes the color "cure".

Most of the photo printer results were clearly superior to the output of the 2605dn but that's also clearly partially subjective because of the glossy nature of the paper and the resulting "photo look" of the result. However I was really very satisfied with the same images produced in the original duplex "working copy" version out of the 2605dn as well.


I bought my 2605dn new from HP back in 2006, and it came with a small packet of plain white HP laserjet paper as well as a small packet of "HP laserjet glossy heavy photo paper".

I tried printing a true high-quality photo on that HP laserjet glossy photo paper (you need to make sure you first click the right values in printer settings to designate the type of paper being used which results in a much slower special pass through the rollers inside the printer, and also to print on only one side and not duplex the thing) and it was only fair (probably because there are only three colored powdered toner cartridges plus black in the 2605dn). Certainly nothing like my Canon Pixma Pro9000 which has seven different color liquid ink tanks plus black) which prints on true Canon high-quality glossy photo "Platinum" paper.

Anyway, I'm still amazed at your results, coming not only from a direct print on the 2605dn but then scanning it back in (using what scanner and what settings?) to what you show above. And JPG is a lossy compression, so every time you go through a transformation you lose even more detail and quality as compared to the true original (which again, may have its own quality issues depending on the JPG quality/compression parameters used and the software used to produce the JPG).

Very impressive. Certainly the green in the original image is fabulous! Very surprising.

WebFoot said:

Printer = HP laserjet 2605dn, Computer = HP Z series workstation W7 Pro 64. Connection via USB. Oh, network connection isn't practical as the router is at the other end of the house.

The principle printer is and will remain a Brother HL-5470 (monochrome) as it is connected via wireless network connection and accessed throughout the house.

Just in passing, just because the 2605dn doesn't have wireless networking capability and locating it near the router at the other end of the house so as to use it in "networked mode" is not really an option, doesn't mean you can't still use the 2605dn for your whole-home printing needs.

You don't need to print to a "networked printer" (either wired or wireless to the network-capable printer).

You can "share" the printer which is now being hosted locally (via USB) by your HP Z-series workstation with every other computer in your home that has networking connectivity to your HP workstation machine as part of your home LAN.

I don't know what other machines (laptops or desktops, doesn't matter) you have, and it also doesn't matter if they're running 32-bit WinXP/Vista or 32/64-bit Win7 or Win8/8.1, if they're all on your home LAN and you've got things set up properly (so that all of your home machines are in the same workgroup and all are visible and show up as part of "Network" when you look) then the printer hosted by your HP Z machine can be used by all of your other machines... through "printer sharing" functionality of all versions Windows. You can set up the 2605dn on the networked HP Z machine as the "default" printer on any other machine, same as if it were truly "local"... as a result of the "add printer" dialog on each client machine.

If necessary you can install TWO versions (one 32-bit and one 64-bit) of the HP printer driver on the "host/server" HP Z machine where the printer is locally USB-connected. Then when you go through the setup for "add a networked printer" on each of the other "client" machines the HP Z machine will actually "deliver" the appropriate 32-bit or 64-bit version of the driver to that "client" machine. And that's it!

Bingo! You now can print to the 2605dn hosted locally via USB on the HP Z machine from any other machine in your house that is on the LAN and has connectivity to the HP Z machine.

Let me know if you'd like to do this but don't know exactly how to do it, and I'll walk you through it. Seems highly desirable even if you don't think it'll get much use, but I think that once you have it available you WILL use it as the printed output on the 2605dn on 98 bright paper (no matter whether color or B&W) is typically much "prettier" than what comes out of an inkjet printer. Plus, you can print duplex on the 2605dn, and surely you'd want to make that feature available from any computer in your home.

Those prints were printed on some Xerox Premium Multipurpose Paper. 24# 96 brightness. same paper I was using on my Canon printer up until it bit the dust recently. Appears the printhead is shot and the best price I could find on a new PH was $120. Paid less than that for the 2605.

The scanner I use is an Epson Perfection 4490 photo scanner. I'm not much of an all-in-one fan and have always kept my scanning and printer needs separate.

Don't really have a need for a color photo printer at home. When ever I need glossy photo prints I put the files on a memory stick and get them printed on very high end photo printers that are available to employees at the local HP Div. 4x6 up to poster size prints. And did I mention, FREE is a very good price. The 2605 is going to do just fine for the wife's card printing needs. I'm also adding the extra memory due to the large file sizes the card program generates.

I know all about printer sharing. Didn't really work with the old desktop running XP and the laptop running Vista. The wireless laser printer has taken care of that. The card prgm the wife uses requires the swapping of CD's from time to time so limiting the use of that prgm to the new desktop seems the most practical thus the USB connection is just fine.

WebFoot said:

Those prints were printed on some Xerox Premium Multipurpose Paper. 24# 96 brightness. same paper I was using on my Canon printer up until it bit the dust recently. Appears the printhead is shot and the best price I could find on a new PH was $120. Paid less than that for the 2605.

Well obviously that was a terrific price for your used 2605dn. I would have been a bit skeptical of its condition for that price, but if it works fine then it was obviously a great deal.

I paid $860 to HP Home back in 2006 for mine new, along with a set of four toner cartridges (which go for $282 online today) and some other supplies. Can't recall exactly but I think it was on sale for $499, and then tax+shipping, etc. I don't think HP makes them anymore, and new they're over $1K. Used and refurb they're down in the $100-$400 range.

Real workhorse. I bought it to replace an old HP Laserjet 4+ (with duplex attachment) that I'd owned for about 14 years, and which still worked fine. But I wanted a faster printer and color.

So far in eight years I've only had one true "failure" of the 2605dn which required genuine repair by a printer repair shop here in LA that came over to pick it up and then dropped it back off when it was finished. The printer would power itself off immediately after going through its seemingly normal power-on sequence. Needed a new processor card inside that was about $150.

The scanner I use is an Epson Perfection 4490 photo scanner. I'm not much of an all-in-one fan and have always kept my scanning and printer needs separate.

Apparently we both think along similar lines, equipment-wise.

I have an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo scanner, along with Lasersoft's Silverfast Ai v8 scanning software package to supplement the Epson driver. Photoshop CS6.


Anyway, glad you're finally up and running with the 2605dn and the latest HP PS/PCL6 drivers... "in production".

Your additional 256MB of memory add-on should complete the project. Don't forget to update the PS driver "printer properties" to show 32767 of "available Postscript memory".

Wanted to thank you again for your help.

The printer shows a total page count <10k which seems not bad for a printer rated for something like 3.5k/mo. Firmware was updated last yr and a had a service check in recent months. All that was needed/done was to clean the mirrors.

You mentioned LA, I grew up there and lived in several towns close to LAX.

WebFoot said:

Wanted to thank you again for your help.

You're welcome.

Just one more post-mortem observation (I'm simply not willing to give up until I get to the bottom of the mystery to my satisfaction)...

As I look back at your "Device Settings" -> ABOUT screenshots from your original auto-installed driver (which clearly shows it as being a PS driver using HPMCPD25.PPD, and not a PCL driver as I'd just assumed it would be) and compare them to my own (which were from my latest 5.8.0.17508 PCL6 driver), I see that your device title is different from mine (even from my own PS driver), showing as "HP Color LaserJet 2605/2605dn/2605dtn PS".

Also, the copyright date statement from HP on the ABOUT page is also very different. Yours shows 2005 as the copyright date for that HPMCPD25.PPD PS driver, and the latest 5.8.0.17508 from HP shows 2013, for both my PCL6 and PS printers. I still can't imagine how the auto-install your Windows 7 system went through (which used Windows Update to go up to the Microsoft driver repository in the cloud to retrieve what presumably would then have been the "most recent" driver) would have ended up with a 9-year old version of that driver! And a PS driver at that, rather than a PCL driver as occurred on my own machine.

Now true, the driver retrieved automatically from MS's driver download site is whatever HP (the vendor) most recently provided to MS. That's also how some other hardware driver updates get "pushed out" with Windows Update, from the vendor to user through Windows Update. But in this case the implication is that HP hasn't updated the drivers given to MS since 2005?? Is that really possible?

Anyway, in the 8 years since I've had my 2605dn, I've probably done six Windows 7 installs "from scratch" where the first time auto-install (at power-on) for the correct driver for the USB-attached printer went through its motions, I have NEVER ended up with a PS driver with a copyright date of 2005. It has ALWAYS been a much more recent PCL6 driver that I ended up with (can't recall now if it was actually the same as the "most recent" PCL6 driver downloaded from the HP site itself, as it's been quite a while since my last Win7 install on the machine to which the 2605dn is currently USB-connected).

But for absolute sure I do remember that it was always a PCL driver, not a PS driver as you show in your screenshots.

Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, although I did find HPMCPD25.PPD on my machine in the Windows \Driver Repository, my research suggests it is PS for an HP 2800 series printer, not an HP 2600 series printer. I wonder if this is tied to your particular HP Z-series machine itself? Is this a Win7 pre-installed by HP, or did you do your own subsequent reinstall-from-scratch?

In other words I wonder if something already in the \Driver Repository on your machine (with an HP-pre-installed Windows 7) told the auto-install process (when you powered on your new 2605dn) that your local PS driver for a 2800-series printer (a) somehow also applied to the 2605dn hardware id, and (b) was "more current" or appropriate than the PCL6 driver which I'm sure is on the MS driver repository in the cloud??


Ok. Enough blabbering speculation and questioning.

To satisfy my own curiosity, I went directly to the Microsoft Update Catalog site (where Windows Update goes for software updates and drivers, but you must use IE and not Firefox as otherwise the page won't open properly). I then searched for "HP 2605dn" and received the following hit list (showing three drivers eligible for use with Win7):



Although the annotation appears the same, my experience is that typically these three drivers offered are for (1) x86, (2) x64, and (3) Xeon processors. So I selected all three and downloaded them, and sure enough what I got were the predicted three driver CAB variant packages, and I then expanded the x64 version:



which revealed the sought-after INF file inside, namely PRNHP001.INF:



I then looked inside PRNHP001.INF using NOTEPAD (with "wordwrap" enabled so I could take a complete screenshot) and looked down at the item for the 2605dn printer (see highlight in the following screenshot):



Well, sure enough, now that I can see inside this PRNHP001.INF it's clear that the corresponding driver obviously is a PS driver and is EXACTLY THE ONE YOU HAVE BEEN GETTING, and which uses HPMCPD25.PPD!!! It is also named exactly the same as is shown in your ABOUT screenshot, and I suspect that while the MS download site shows it as version 6.1.7233.0 dated 6/21/2006, my guess is that that it would have your 2005 copyright date inside and other matching specific details.

Amazingly, it absolutely IS a PS driver and not a PCL6 driver. This is very definitely different from the last time I did my own auto-install for the 2605dn and which resulted in a PCL6 driver, and not a PS driver. Obviously if I were to do a fresh reinstall-from-scratch today for Win7, that when I first powered-on my 2605dn and the auto-install was done, that I too would be given exactly this same driver as it is what is now being offered through Windows Update and the MS update catalog site.

I'm guessing this is all tied to what they did to update of the MS driver site in support Windows 8/8.1 as well as previous Windows 7 environments. Note from my screenshot above that they also have two drivers specifically for Windows 8/8.1 only (they look like small "bootstrap" files, not the complete driver files), with a newer version 6.2.8306.0, although also dated 6/21/2006. Seems very strange as Windows 8 was not around back then, but who knows how these things get titled and dated?

Note that the file dates of these objects goes back to 2009, when HP was probably doing its development for Windows 8 drivers before handing them over to MS for inclusion 3 years later in the released finished Windows 8 product.


Anyway, I have now satisfied my own curiosity as to why you got what you got. It has nothing to do with your HP-Z machine. It has everything to do with what's now on the MS Windows Updates site for this printer. And apparently HP has decided it should be the PS driver that gets auto-installed, and not the PCL6 driver... something I'm all for.

Yes, this is STILL NOT THE LATEST DRIVER AVAILABLE THROUGH HP (which is 5.8.0.17508 and dated January 2014, which oddly seems to have a lower number than either 6.1.7233.0 or 6.2.8306.0 as shown on the MS site, both of which are dated June 2006!!), but at this point I don't care anymore!

I'm only finally satisfied that I at last understand WHY you got what you got, and why the ABOUT information shows what it did.

I'd say "case closed".