trouble sharing HP DeskJet 648C

  • Thread starter Thread starter Glenn Knickerbocker
  • Start date Start date
G

Glenn Knickerbocker

OK, I'm asking about this a month too late, after all support for
DOS-based Windows is gone. Our 648C used to be parallel-connected to an
old machine and happily shared among various Windows versions old and
new. Now my wife's moved it to her newer XP machine, connected by USB,
and I'm not finding a way to share it with my old Win98 machine.

If I define the network printer to Win98 using the parallel driver, it
prints garbage. If I define it using the USB driver, applications come
up with messages about a missing resource when they try to talk to it.
If I try to install the Win98 USB driver on the WinXP machine so it can
be loaded over the network, it just quietly refuses to install.

Is it worth hunting for a newer driver, or am I just up the creek? All
I have is the disk I got with the printer in August 2001. HP's web site
just says sorry, our license from Microsoft doesn't let us provide this
anymore.

¬R
 
Is it worth hunting for a newer driver, or am I just up the creek? All
I have is the disk I got with the printer in August 2001. HP's web site
just says sorry, our license from Microsoft doesn't let us provide this
anymore.
Click to expand...

Update: It turns out HP's site does have a newer driver listed under
Windows 95, from 2004. It doesn't help.

¬R http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/aol/whynot.r.html N.B. - Do not
on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.
 
Glenn Knickerbocker said:
OK, I'm asking about this a month too late, after all support for
DOS-based Windows is gone. Our 648C used to be parallel-connected to an
old machine and happily shared among various Windows versions old and
new. Now my wife's moved it to her newer XP machine, connected by USB,
and I'm not finding a way to share it with my old Win98 machine.

If I define the network printer to Win98 using the parallel driver, it
prints garbage. If I define it using the USB driver, applications come
up with messages about a missing resource when they try to talk to it.
If I try to install the Win98 USB driver on the WinXP machine so it can
be loaded over the network, it just quietly refuses to install.

Is it worth hunting for a newer driver, or am I just up the creek? All
I have is the disk I got with the printer in August 2001. HP's web site
just says sorry, our license from Microsoft doesn't let us provide this
anymore.

¬R
Click to expand...

Not sure I quite understand what you are doing but the 648c is supported
natively in WinXP, you don't need to load any drivers. You should be able to
install it by either using the Add Printer wizard or by just plugging the
printer into the PC and powering the printer on. Just make sure you do the
following first. Uninstall or delete all iterations of the printer from
Printers and Faxes. Then in the Printers Applet, select File/Server Properties
and select the Drivers TAB, select and remove anything in the list that
mentions the 648c (640c, 642c, 648c). Now reboot and install the printer but do
not use any drivers that you have downloaded or that you have on disk, they
will not work, allow the wizard to find the driver. All you should now need to
do is share the printer in the normal way and browse to it from the other PC(s).
Let me know how you get on.
Tony
MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
Tony said:
will not work, allow the wizard to find the driver. All you should now need to
do is share the printer in the normal way and browse to it from the other PC(s).
Click to expand...

The problem is in browsing to it from Win98. Win98 asks me to install a
driver, but the USB driver refuses to install when the printer isn't
connected to the Win98 machine by USB.

If I use the parallel driver, it gives me garbage output.

If I attach the printer to the Win98 machine by USB and install the USB
driver, and then try to reuse that driver for the shared printer,
applications can't talk to the driver, which apparently must have been
customized with the name of the USB port when it was installed.

¬R
 
Glenn Knickerbocker said:
The problem is in browsing to it from Win98. Win98 asks me to install a
driver, but the USB driver refuses to install when the printer isn't
connected to the Win98 machine by USB.

If I use the parallel driver, it gives me garbage output.

If I attach the printer to the Win98 machine by USB and install the USB
driver, and then try to reuse that driver for the shared printer,
applications can't talk to the driver, which apparently must have been
customized with the name of the USB port when it was installed.

¬R
Click to expand...

Hmmm
Let me see if I have got this right -
The printer is installed on a WinXP PC using either parallel or USB and it
works OK from that PC.
The printer is shared and you can browse to it across the network from the
Win98 PC (can the Win98 PC see the printer?) but it then asks for a driver is
that right? I would have expected it to fetch the driver across the network
from the WinXP PC but if that is not the case then see below.
So far as I know the 648c uses native drivers in Win98 so when it asks for a
driver you will need to put your Win98 CD in the drive and find the file that
the installer is looking for, failing that you will have to find a copy of the
Win98 driver which may never have existed other than on the Win98 CD, I'm not
sure!
Tony
MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
Tony said:
So far as I know the 648c uses native drivers in Win98
Click to expand...

Nope, the drivers for Win98 are supplied by HP.

Oh, well. My wife finally got a new cartridge for her DeskJet 3420 and
hooked that back up so I can share it again now.

¬R
 
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