Printer recognized, now it's not

I purchased a new VAIO with Vista installed. I attached my old HP LaserJet 6P
(supported by Vista) by USB, driver installed fine and printer worked fine
for a few weeks. For an unknown reason it then would not work (jobs sent hung
up with a printer error) and fixing required deleting the 6p driver and
letting Vista reinstall the driver (unplug/plug in printer). This needed
doing each start-up. Now Vista no longer recognises the printer - unplugging
and plugging USB gives the message 'unknown device' - but there appears to be
no way then to step through and map to internal Vista drivers and HP only
offers the Vista driver in Vista not in it's www site. One other odd thing -
when I delete the 6p driver then reinstall manually it says there is already
this driver present - although it was deleted via printer list on control
panel.

Sorry for the long post - any help would be MOST appreciated!!!!

Other USB devices all still working correctly? If so, try a new USB cable.
--
Cari (MS-MVP)
Windows Technologies - Printing & Imaging
http://www.coribright.com/windows

"alsch" <alsch@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:AB9865E4-0E71-45E8-B485-3138C5F71EB6@microsoft.com...
>I purchased a new VAIO with Vista installed. I attached my old HP LaserJet
>6P
> (supported by Vista) by USB, driver installed fine and printer worked fine
> for a few weeks. For an unknown reason it then would not work (jobs sent
> hung
> up with a printer error) and fixing required deleting the 6p driver and
> letting Vista reinstall the driver (unplug/plug in printer). This needed
> doing each start-up. Now Vista no longer recognises the printer -
> unplugging
> and plugging USB gives the message 'unknown device' - but there appears to
> be
> no way then to step through and map to internal Vista drivers and HP only
> offers the Vista driver in Vista not in it's www site. One other odd
> thing -
> when I delete the 6p driver then reinstall manually it says there is
> already
> this driver present - although it was deleted via printer list on control
> panel.
>
> Sorry for the long post - any help would be MOST appreciated!!!!
>

Thanks Cari,

In the end I did resolve the problem - the solution came via Don (see below)
on the hardware_devices discussion group where I also posted the query.

Subject: Re: printer worked now doesn't - now not recognised 4/18/2007
3:20 PM PST

By: Don
In: microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices



alsch wrote:
> I purchased a new VAIO with Vista installed. I attached my old HP LaserJet 6P
> (supported by Vista) by USB, driver installed fine and printer worked fine
> for a few weeks...

Your problem is a bit different from some other USB problems, but this
trick might help, and it won't hurt anything:

Try deleting C:\windows\inf\INFCACHE.1 because it may be corrupted.
You will first need to edit its file permissions to give Full Control
to the Users group.

Reboot the machine with the printer unplugged, and then plug it in.


"Cari (MS-MVP)" wrote:

> Other USB devices all still working correctly? If so, try a new USB cable.
> --
> Cari (MS-MVP)
> Windows Technologies - Printing & Imaging
> http://www.coribright.com/windows
>
> "alsch" <alsch@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:AB9865E4-0E71-45E8-B485-3138C5F71EB6@microsoft.com...
> >I purchased a new VAIO with Vista installed. I attached my old HP LaserJet
> >6P...