HP printer installation

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I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

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I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

Reply | Quote

I have been trying to install my HP J480 all-in-one for almost two years. On my networked Vista PC it installed without a hitch, including the HP Solution Center which handles scanning, faxes, etc. The XP SP3 installation quits at about 90%, with the message “There was a problem installing hardware HP OJ J6400 series. The specified port is unknown.” It turns out that I can print (but not scan or fax) successfully. When I look at the properties for the printer and check the port settings it show the same ethernet TCP/IP port used by my Vista PC. What failed to install completely is the Solution Center software. Clicking on that desktop icon yields the message “No HP devices have been detected” and then closes.

I went to the ethernet connection after many, many attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling (with latest HP software from their site) using the USB connection. HP support could not solve the problem. Neither could various HP forums where I found dozens of people with similar problems with a host of HP printers. To complicate matters, when I reboot the PC I get this message from Windows: “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close.” This message appears two or three more times until bootup is complete. Interspersed with those messages is one about a failure to install HP J6480. Searching Microsoft KB for answers produced nothing useful. (Yes I did “clean boot”, played with Msconfig, etc.) After this bootup nonsense is finished the system operates normally. And I can print in B&W and color!

I am looking to this newly expanded forum for help.
HH

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I think the error messages are part of your problem. Something in XP is not happy and it may be hardware or software.
Can you use other USB devices?
Do you have other strange behaviour on that PC?

cheers, Paul

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Thanks for the reply. Of course XP is unhappy. It’s always moaning about something! Seriously though, this PC runs well, except for the error messages when rebooting. I have a USB laser printer that works fine. I still want to know why the “port is unknown” when it shows up in the printer properties. And it’s a TCP/IP port, not a USB. I replaced an old Canon all-in-one USB, which worked fine, with this new HP J6480. Judging from the myriad similar comments on HP and other forums there is definitely a bug in HP’s Solution Center installation routine. The fix, however, seems to be elusive.
HH

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The port should be USB, not TCP. TCP is for network connections only.
Does Windows Device Manager see the printer? Right click on My Computer and select Manage, then Device manager.

cheers, Paul

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I don’t think you understand my configuration. I have two networked PCs, a Vista computer and an XP computer. The Vista PC is connected to the HP printer via a TCP/IP port. It works fine.
The printer has three optional connections: USB, ethernet (TCP/IP) and wireless. After many failed attempts to install the printer via the USB connection I chose the TCP/IP for the XP PC. That connection fails at the same point in the installation, with the same error messages as the USB connection, “The specified port is unknown”. My question is why the port is unknown when the printer Properties show the port alive and well.
HH

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HP printers can be extremely finicky when it comes to their software.

One thing I find that tends to help is to uninstall the software completely from the computer, and then remove all traces of the printer in Device Manager. The trick is however, that you also want to remove “hidden” entries in Device Manager that relate to the printer. I may have posted this in another thread, but what you’ll want to do is open a command prompt, and type the following (as referenced in THIS KBase article:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

I had to do this when I goofed up while installing an older HP Photosmart P1100 printer (plugging in printer before installing drivers) and this was the only way to clean things up.

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Make sure you use the same IP address for the printer as the Vista PC uses.

cheers, Paul

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Does the printer have it’s own network connection or is it shared from the Vista PC? If the latter, the problem is likely to do with the Windows Firewall settings of the Vista PC, which tend not to play well with earlier versions of Windows. Alternatively, a share from the Vista PC may use a driver not compatible with XP. It should be possible to add the XP driver to the share, but without a Vista machine to hand and after more than a bottle of wine, I’m not going to try to tell you how to do that right now!

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Does the printer have it’s own network connection or is it shared from the Vista PC? If the latter, the problem is likely to do with the Windows Firewall settings of the Vista PC, which tend not to play well with earlier versions of Windows. Alternatively, a share from the Vista PC may use a driver not compatible with XP. It should be possible to add the XP driver to the share, but without a Vista machine to hand and after more than a bottle of wine, I’m not going to try to tell you how to do that right now!

Your post raised some interesting points. The printer uses a shared connection from the Vista PC. However, I installed the HP software on the XP PC, hoping it would “find” the TCP/IP port. It says it didn’t. The Vista PC also has a Web Services printer (WSD) which I my research found that Vista installs automatically. When I look at the Port properties on the XP PC I find that the port uses the same IP address as the Vista PC but it points to the WSD printer, not the “regular” J6480 printer! What’s going on here!

With regard to your firewall comment I am using Norton Internet Security, which disables the Vista firewall.
HH

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Having had similar problems, the solution seemed to be to install the printer from the CD on the other computers. Might give that a go.

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I am a little confused by your post. When you say I “should install the printer on the CD from the other computers” ( I only have one other PC) do you mean install from the Vista PC? That PC already has the printer installed and it works fine. Also, the problem is with the installation of the HP Solution Center software, which controls scanning, faxing, etc. The basic printer drivers have been installed and are working correctly on the XP PC. I can print to the HP J6480 from the XP computer with no problems. I just can’t scan.
HH

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Maybe the scan program requires a directly attached MFC? Does it say it supports scanning over the network?

cheers, Paul

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The printer has, as I stated previously, three modes of communications; USB, ethernet and wireless. The HP Solution Center software is designed to work with whatever mode the user has chosen. After reading many threads on HP and other forums I, like many other frustrated users, feel that there is a software bug in HP’s installation program. This problem occurs with many different models of HP printers and with single PCs (not networked) using Vista or XP.
HH

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Note: I originally posted this message on the Dell Forum, but I’m hedging my bets and probing for ideas from this end.

I recently acquired a used Dell Dimension 4600 in good condition. At the same time I acquired an HP Photosmart 7960. My OS is Windows XP. The problem: I can’t install the printer. The printer works fine, it just doesn’t seem to want to work on the PC. I went to the HP chat. We tried everything, twice. They suggested the problem wasn’t the printer but the PC. The photosmart is listed as compatible with Win XP. When I try to use the Add Wizard and print a test page, page fails to print. When I try to download installation software from the HP website, it makes it to step 3 before I run into this roadblock: “Invalid command line argument. Consult the Windows Installer SDK for detailed command line help.” Then everything installed up to that point gets uninstalled. I’ve exhausted the HP option. I can’t do Windows chat because the greed heads charge money. I can’t get on Dell chat for some strange reason. I was on HP chat for two days trying to fix this, so you can see how desperate I am. I have two good pieces of equipment that just won’t talk to each other. I don’t want to send a perfectly good printer to the junkyard. Something, somewhere is keeping these two apart. Help!

Greythings8

The printer has, as I stated previously, three modes of communications; USB, ethernet and wireless. The HP Solution Center software is designed to work with whatever mode the user has chosen. After reading many threads on HP and other forums I, like many other frustrated users, feel that there is a software bug in HP’s installation program. This problem occurs with many different models of HP printers and with single PCs (not networked) using Vista or XP.
HH

I came across this post, which seems to speak directly to my situation, so I modified my earlier post and copied/pasted it here. The only thing I can say is amen brother!

Greythings8

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I had much the same problem with the HP J6480, running on XP Pro-3. When the Scan function failed, I called HP and spent 9 hours on the phone uninstalling, reinstalling, upgrading the Solution Center, etc., and they finally got it to work. Three months later, I had the same problem again. After several more hours watching them control my computer and doing cleanups, uninstalls, etc, they told me I was elevated and Engineering would call me. They didn’t, so I called again and got a “top tier” guy, who fiddled for a while and said that the problem is in my Bios–it somehow “lost a scan function.” They did say that someone else would call me with advice–but they didn’t.

I can scan directly, but not through the Solution Center (which now does not work.

Interestingly, today I tried to hook up a new Canon camera to the computer. It was not recognized by the computer, even though an older Canon was. The Canon site suggested some other device was interfering, so I disconnected the HP 6480 and, voila, the camera connection worked. So it looks to me like the HP and Canon softwares are doing battle and interfering with each other.

Any advice? Mayby I should burn the HP and buy a Canon all-in-one?

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Thanks for your reply, and welcome to the large group (on other forums) of unhappy HP printer owners. When HP told you there was a problem in the BIOS I recalled a recent conversation with a very savvy friend who suggested that I check HP’s site for a BIOS upgrade. The laptop with the printer problem is an HP. While updating the BIOS is fairly easy, I’m not sure I want to go through the uninstall and reinstall printer exercise again. The laptop is my wife’s and she doesn’t appreciate my taking over her computer for a long debugging session. So, for the present, when she needs to scan and email (our most frequent use of the scan function) she sits at my networked Vista computer and gets it done.
If I do decide to update the BIOS I’ll let you know the results.
HH

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I’ve used my HP All-In-One for two years with my Toshiba laptop with Vista OS. I use the Printer via USB and since it is a laptop, I unplug it every day. The printer needs to be re-installed at least twice a month. This is the only problem I have ever had with either Vista or Toshiba so I assume the problem is with the printer.

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This thread is rather long so I might have missed something already mentioned; if I did I apologize in advance. I have an HP Officejet J6450 that gave me problems with installing for Windows 7. Specifically I could not install Solution Manager and that prevented the printer’s scanner unit from functioning from the Windows 7 computer. I mention that simply because it never would install until this January when HP put a new complement of software on their support site. I installed that and the problems all disappeared.

As for not being able to install on an XP machine I can only say something that someone already said; you must install the full complement of software from the CD or a download on each computer in the network for them to connect to the printer.

I know my printer is a different model but I’m sure it is very much similar from a manufacturing standpoint. I have the printer attached on a wired network to 2 XP computers, one Windows 7 Pro., and one Vista Ultimate. Via wireless I connect to one Windows 2000 Pro. and one XP Pro computers. All computers have available service packs and patches installed.

I guess my suggestion is to be sure you have the latest software and it is installed on all networked computers. As for the BIOS suggestion, it may be valid but most likely from my experience with tech support people it is a last ditch parachute for use when nothing in their script has fixed a problem.

Cecil Britton

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An article on http://www.out-of-warranty.com made me wonder. My PC and printer are second hand. There’s a lot of stuff I’m still going over, including HP programs. Could old HP progs be interfering with installation?

Greythings8

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Hi Cecil, thanks for your comments. This is a long thread and I am the original poster. I am interested in exploring the new software that HP has posted. Way back in this thread I described how many times I had uninstalled and reinstalled the software to no avail. The printer works fine on my networked Vista PC, just won’t install on my XP PC. The last install was in October. Maybe the new software will help. I’ll keep you posted.
HH

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Additional info on my looooong series of problems trying to get Solution Center to work on the HP J6480 running XP Pro-3: On two of the “help” sessions, they downloaded and installed a “new, better” Solution Center. The last time, they installed the drivers for the 8500, version 13. It still doesn’t work. And, of course, you can no longer re-install from your disk, since it is an earlier version.

How do we get HP to acknowledge they have a serious problem with their Solution Center and do something about it?

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How do we get HP to acknowledge they have a serious problem with their Solution Center and do something about it?

From my experience, that is a hopeless task.

I have an HP Officejet 5750 that worked flawlessly on my old XP computer, with faxing, multiple consecutive scans, printing, etc. Once I got to Vista, it was a totally different experience. The HP software did not run on Vista and the drivers did not work properly. Faxing doesn’t work on Vista, and I can only scan via Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) — not the HP software, and can only scan one or maybe two images before WIA crashes and I have to power cycle the machine before I can scan again. Also, the front panel “Scan” button doesn’t function on Vista either.

I estimate that I have spent over 12 hours over the past year with multiple calls to HP support. It always ends with them saying reinstall the HP software. Repeating the same action expecting a different income is foolishness. I have given up on calling HP.

I am in the market for a better scanner that can also do negatives and slides and I will not be looking at HP products.

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From my experience, that is a hopeless task.

I have an HP Officejet 5750 that worked flawlessly on my old XP computer, with faxing, multiple consecutive scans, printing, etc. Once I got to Vista, it was a totally different experience. The HP software did not run on Vista and the drivers did not work properly. Faxing doesn’t work on Vista, and I can only scan via Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) — not the HP software, and can only scan one or maybe two images before WIA crashes and I have to power cycle the machine before I can scan again. Also, the front panel “Scan” button doesn’t function on Vista either.

I estimate that I have spent over 12 hours over the past year with multiple calls to HP support. It always ends with them saying reinstall the HP software. Repeating the same action expecting a different income is foolishness. I have given up on calling HP.

I am in the market for a better scanner that can also do negatives and slides and I will not be looking at HP products.

I spent 12 hours over two days several weeks ago with HP support. I’d say 12 hours is just about how long they’re useful. The way I see it, the only way to get HP’s attention would be to find all the people who have problem HP printers, bundle all their complaints, shove every last one to HP support, and post them on as many forums as possible. Complain loudly with many voices. I’m not giving up however. I’m pursuing several options with my HP printer (including a nuke option, wipe everything and do a [what they say?] clean install, but that’s a last resort). I’m still open to suggestions.

Greythings

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Hi Guys,
I sympathize with you for the problems you are having and I can certainly understand why you don’t harbor any warm feelings toward HP.

One problem I had in trying to install from the downloaded 256 MB file was that it only offered to install to a USB or a Wireless installation. The option to install to ethernet was missing from the option menu. That’s when I tried uninstalling the previously failed software suite. I uninstalled, ran a registry cleaner, emptied all temp files and defragged, still no success! I finally downloaded the official HP Cleanup utility (abt. 3 MB), Ran it through four cycles of clean and reboot and finally I was running normally again and got the option to install to an ethernet setup.

So, if you are having problems running the downloaded software I suggest you go through the cleanup routine before proceeding. The utility has 4 levels of cleanup and they must be run sequentially with a reboot required after each step.

As for not having a CD based program you can get around that by unpacking the download and burning the resultant files to a CD. That step is really unnecessary since you can easily run the download from Windows repeatedly.

Good luck!

Cecil Britton

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Hi Guys,
I sympathize with you for the problems you are having and I can certainly understand why you don’t harbor any warm feelings toward HP.

One problem I had in trying to install from the downloaded 256 MB file was that it only offered to install to a USB or a Wireless installation. The option to install to ethernet was missing from the option menu. That’s when I tried uninstalling the previously failed software suite. I uninstalled, ran a registry cleaner, emptied all temp files and defragged, still no success! I finally downloaded the official HP Cleanup utility (abt. 3 MB), Ran it through four cycles of clean and reboot and finally I was running normally again and got the option to install to an ethernet setup.

So, if you are having problems running the downloaded software I suggest you go through the cleanup routine before proceeding. The utility has 4 levels of cleanup and they must be run sequentially with a reboot required after each step.

As for not having a CD based program you can get around that by unpacking the download and burning the resultant files to a CD. That step is really unnecessary since you can easily run the download from Windows repeatedly.

Good luck!

Cecil Britton

Hi Cecil. I am about to download the HP Cleanup utility. On checking the HP site I can only find one version, #2.038, 2.04 MB, dated May 19, 2004! Is this the one you used?
HH

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Hi Guys,
I sympathize with you for the problems you are having and I can certainly understand why you don’t harbor any warm feelings toward HP.

One problem I had in trying to install from the downloaded 256 MB file was that it only offered to install to a USB or a Wireless installation. The option to install to ethernet was missing from the option menu. That’s when I tried uninstalling the previously failed software suite. I uninstalled, ran a registry cleaner, emptied all temp files and defragged, still no success! I finally downloaded the official HP Cleanup utility (abt. 3 MB), Ran it through four cycles of clean and reboot and finally I was running normally again and got the option to install to an ethernet setup.

So, if you are having problems running the downloaded software I suggest you go through the cleanup routine before proceeding. The utility has 4 levels of cleanup and they must be run sequentially with a reboot required after each step.

As for not having a CD based program you can get around that by unpacking the download and burning the resultant files to a CD. That step is really unnecessary since you can easily run the download from Windows repeatedly.

Good luck!

Cecil Britton

I will need more than luck. I did the four levels of cleanup (but not a registry defrag) and reboots. I then ran the full downloaded software, which gave me the choice of USB or network (hooray). However, after “inspecting my system” it said I had to reboot to clean up some residual files. I did that, the program continued where it left off and then gave me the same message. After three reboots I realized that I was in an endless loop and gave up. Any thoughts on what to do next?
Second question: Do youy know where HP puts the results of the .exe expansion? I can’t seem to find it on my PC. I assume there is a setup.exe file as there is on the CD.
Thanks,
Howard

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Here are the transcripts of my chat with HP. Maybe you can get ideas based on my experience.

Greythings

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Howard, No the cleanup file you need is not nearly that old. I just looked for the Windows XP software and drivers for the J6480 and at the very bottom of the list is a file “HP Officejet Software & Driver Removal Utility, version 10.0.1 of size 1.16 MB. That same file is valid for Vista but there is a newer one for Windows 7.

As I said before, I am using the HP software on an Officejet J6450 and it runs fine on Windows 2k, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. I know that is not comforting when you are struggling to get things to work but I think it does say that the software can work as advertised. Having been around Windows since its birth I have seen many inexplicable problems that somehow disappeared with a new clean installation of Windows. I know that is not what anyone wants to hear but it does seem to be another feature of Windows that none of us intended buying.

Good luck!

Cecil

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Hi Howard,

What cpu is in your XP SP3 computer? If it is an AMD processor, there are known issues with XP’s SP3, for which there is a fix. I repaired an HP computer (w/AMD cpu) when it choked after upgrading to service pack 3. However I have not heard of SP3 issues concerning HP printers.

Was your XP machine updated to SP3 before you attempted to connect to the printer or did you have the same problems when it was SP2? If it was already SP3 it would not take long to remove SP3 to revert back to SP2 (assuming you applied the SP3 update) temporarily to see if the software installs without error. Just a thought.

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Hi Howard,

What cpu is in your XP SP3 computer? If it is an AMD processor, there are known issues with XP’s SP3, for which there is a fix. I repaired an HP computer (w/AMD cpu) when it choked after upgrading to service pack 3. However I have not heard of SP3 issues concerning HP printers.

Was your XP machine updated to SP3 before you attempted to connect to the printer or did you have the same problems when it was SP2? If it was already SP3 it would not take long to remove SP3 to revert back to SP2 (assuming you applied the SP3 update) temporarily to see if the software installs without error. Just a thought.

Hi Gerald,
Thanks for your response. My CPU is an Intel processor. Good thought, though. You sound like a computer tech of some sort. This problem is a “Golden Oldie” for HP, as this long thread (and others on other forums) demonstrate. It is related to HP’s Solution Center software for their all-in-one printers. I got this printer about two years ago and have been trying unsuccessfully to install it since then. I have a networked
Vista PC where it installed without a hitch. Others have had good luck with XP and no luck with Vista. Go figure.
HH

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