HP 7960 - Workgroup Printing not sharing

Hello! Using HP Photosmart 7960 as shared printer off of XP Pro SP2 machine.
Works great for the other XP machines that share it. Tried to connect (via
network share) my (new) 64Bit Vista Home Premium box to this printer. Of
course, it asked for the Vista printer drivers, which do exist.

So, the challenge - the drivers won't install on the XP machine, as they are
Vista drivers and error out (simple message saying wrong OS). Installed the
drivers on the Vista machine, which should solve the problem...it didn't.
Went thru both HP directories (under x86 programs) looking for the *.inf
files and according to Vista, none of them are correct. I've tried them all.

Any ideas or help is appreciated! Thanks! David.

Which drivers did you install on the Vista PC. It's looking for 64 bit
drivers which you need on the Vista PC, not 32 bit ones.
--
Cari (MS-MVP) Printing & Imaging
www.coribright.com/windows

"David B" <David B@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2E17F15D-5B6B-4F1C-91D2-92FA6E5FCCE1@microsoft.com...
> Hello! Using HP Photosmart 7960 as shared printer off of XP Pro SP2
> machine.
> Works great for the other XP machines that share it. Tried to connect
> (via
> network share) my (new) 64Bit Vista Home Premium box to this printer. Of
> course, it asked for the Vista printer drivers, which do exist.
>
> So, the challenge - the drivers won't install on the XP machine, as they
> are
> Vista drivers and error out (simple message saying wrong OS). Installed
> the
> drivers on the Vista machine, which should solve the problem...it didn't.
> Went thru both HP directories (under x86 programs) looking for the *.inf
> files and according to Vista, none of them are correct. I've tried them
> all.
>
> Any ideas or help is appreciated! Thanks! David.
>
>

Of course I installed the 64bit drivers!

The .inf files don't seem to be under the HP directories.

"Cari (MS-MVP)" wrote:

> Which drivers did you install on the Vista PC. It's looking for 64 bit
> drivers which you need on the Vista PC, not 32 bit ones.
> --
> Cari (MS-MVP) Printing & Imaging
> www.coribright.com/windows
>
> "David B" <David B@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:2E17F15D-5B6B-4F1C-91D2-92FA6E5FCCE1@microsoft.com...
> > Hello! Using HP Photosmart 7960 as shared printer off of XP Pro SP2
> > machine.
> > Works great for the other XP machines that share it. Tried to connect
> > (via
> > network share) my (new) 64Bit Vista Home Premium box to this printer. Of
> > course, it asked for the Vista printer drivers, which do exist.
> >
> > So, the challenge - the drivers won't install on the XP machine, as they
> > are
> > Vista drivers and error out (simple message saying wrong OS). Installed
> > the
> > drivers on the Vista machine, which should solve the problem...it didn't.
> > Went thru both HP directories (under x86 programs) looking for the *.inf
> > files and according to Vista, none of them are correct. I've tried them
> > all.
> >
> > Any ideas or help is appreciated! Thanks! David.
> >
> >
>

I have this exact same problem, does anyone have an answer?


--
jrh

[tsberry]

When I contacted HP support they said sharing was not supported between the two operating systems. This won't be much help, but so far here is what I've determined. On the XP machine, the driver is identified as a Photosmart 7900. If you install the local (not network) printer driver on the Vista x64 machine, it will be identified as a Photosmart 7960. For one thing even if the dlls were correct, the inf files would have to be edited so as to "fool" the system into thinking they were the same printer.

So, for the time being, someone with a better understating of inf files is going to have to figure out how to edit the 7900 x64 driver into thinking it's a 7900. Then at least all of us trying to do the same thing might have a chance.

[terry2s]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsberry

When I contacted HP support they said sharing was not supported between the two operating systems. This won't be much help, but so far here is what I've determined. On the XP machine, the driver is identified as a Photosmart 7900. If you install the local (not network) printer driver on the Vista x64 machine, it will be identified as a Photosmart 7960. For one thing even if the dlls were correct, the inf files would have to be edited so as to "fool" the system into thinking they were the same printer.

So, for the time being, someone with a better understating of inf files is going to have to figure out how to edit the 7900 x64 driver into thinking it's a 7900. Then at least all of us trying to do the same thing might have a chance.

I had the same problem and was finally able to solve this. Here's what I did:

Download the Vista 64 drivers to your Vista 64 machine. Once installed, Go to Control Panel. Choose printer. Then choose Add Printer.

Choose Add a local printer. Click on Create a new port. The default in the drop down box is Local Port. Do not change that. Click Next.

A dialogue box will appear asking for you to enter a port name. Type in the \\computer name\printer name ie. My computer's name is Vaio and the printer name is Printer so I typed in \\Vaio\printer

Hope this helps someone as I literally spent hours working on a solution to this issue.