HP Printer Driver Advice

Hey all,

This may or may not apply to other brands of printers or even other peripherals, but if you have an HP printer that is not supported by Windows 7 and HP doesn't have a W7 driver released for it yet, this is what you can do to get your printer working.

If your HP printer is showing up as an "other device" in the control panel and you have tried to DL the Vista drivers from HP with no luck, you can still use the Vista driver (32 or 64 bit) in W7. To do so, go to the control panel, right click on the printer (or other device perhaps) that is giving you trouble, go to properties, then click the update driver button. If you click on the driver button and it says no driver is installed for the device, even though you downloaded and tried to get your device working, "updating the driver" may work. After clicking update driver, click on "browse my computer for the driver" manually. If you downloaded the driver package (non-plug and play) from HP and installed it, it should be somewhere in your program files under HP. Locate it with the browse function in driver update and you click install. That should do it.

What I was working with was an HP Laserjet 1020 and just plugging it in wasn't doing the trick, nor was installing the plug and play driver, as the printer would not detect during the install. HP's website stated that they would not be releasing the W7 driver until mid November. So I downloaded the x64 driver for Vista (non-plug and play), installed it, and then manually installed it from the control panel. My HP All-in-One f300 (i think) installed just fine on its own, so again, this just applies to those HP printers that refuse to install. I have a feeling I'll be doing it again tomorrow with an HP color laser printer I got for a steal the other day.

I have a feeling that in the case like this involving other branded printers and possibly other devices; it's worth a shot, at least if drivers have yet to be released for the device or in the worst case, if your device is no longer supported and giving you troubles during their install.

Have you tired forcing the driver using the "I will choose my device" option for the drivers?

or try this...
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppo [...] =c00751649

Well I would first suggest that you remove any printer that you have installed and then go to: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc [...] t=439320&# and download the proper drivers for the Laserjet 1020. They are avalible for Win7 at the HP site in the above link. follow the install directions. Good luck