Saturday 6 September 2008

HP LaserJet 1010 on Windows Vista

Half of the reason for writing this post is in case I ever have to do this again and forget how I did it!

If you've come here from a search engine then chances are you have:

  1. a HP LaserJet 1010
  2. Windows Vista

...and probably some amount of frustration trying to get the two working together.  According to Microsoft and HP it can't be done.  Pah!

After some digging around and some trial and error, here's how I got mine working with Vista SP1:

  1. Dug out the install CD that came with my printer.  (If you don't have a copy of this I really don't have an answer for you because the method I used needed one.  Maybe if you can find an ISO image somewhere to rip the disk then you can try that.)
  2. Found this post which led me to http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c00067783&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
  3. Downloaded EZInstall.exe
  4. Faffed about a bit trying various combinations of things (which you can skip if the next bit works for you first time)
  5. Copied EZInstall.exe to my desktop, right-clicked it, and from the Properties dialog set the compatibility to Windows XP SP2 and ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software3/COL6438/lj-19937-4/EZInstall.exe.  (I have UAC switched on, so I had to click the All Users option first.)
  6. Put the CD in the drive and ran EZInstall.exe, and followed the instructions (namely to switch off the printer at one point, then switch it back on a bit later)
  7. Windows reported that EZInstall.exe had errored, but it was in the Complete phase and it didn't seem to make any difference
  8. Windows was already trying to detect the printer and install the driver by this time which, after quite a while, it did.
  9. Printed a test page (from the Printer's Properties dialog in Control Panel/Printers), which worked just fine.

You don't get the utilities you'd have if you installed normally on XP, but the basic printing functions seem to work just fine.

Don't let anyone tell you the LaserJet 1010 doesn't work with Vista!

4 comments:

  1. I got it working like this:

    1. downloaded the XP drivers from here:

    http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=306505&prodNameId=306507&swEnvOID=228&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=lj-14814-1

    2. unzipped them;
    3. plugged the printer in to the USB port;
    4. let it detect the printer and it just found the drivers itself;
    5. it installed without a hitch and now prints fine.

    This is on Vista SP1 on a hp Pavillion dv9000 laptop.

    All the best,
    Michael A
    http://www.oakfurnitureland.co.uk

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the comment - that was one of the approaches I tried, but even though the drivers were detected they wouldn't install successfully, and from what I've read people get a variety of different behaviours.

    Just out of interest, do you have UAC switched off? I leave mine on, and I wonder whether temporarily disabling it would have allowed me to go the simpler route you did...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for setting innovative examples.

    Here's how I got my HP Laserjet 1010 installed on my Packard Bell iMedia x2416, which is Dual 2 Quad 8200, Vista SP1 32-bit:
    1. I inserted the original HP Laserjet 1010/1012/1015 CD first
    2. I did not autorun it. Exited the autorun wizard
    3. Ran EZinstall (ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software3/COL6438/lj-19937-4/EZInstall.exe)
    4. Do as the wizard says. Go on clicking ok
    5. In my case, Vista rebooted itself midway of installing EZinstall
    6. After rebooting it carried on installing EZinstall from where it left and then at some point asked for some *.ini file
    7. At this point, I chose to browse the CD which was still inside the CD drive
    8. I browsed in the folder labelled “English”, then went into the folder “Drivers”, then into the folder “Win2000_XP”, then the folder “PCL5”. Inside the folder “PCL5”, I chose the file type ‘Setup Information’ by the name “hp1015m5” and okayed it
    9. Somehow, both, 1010 and 1015 got installed as printers in the control panel>printers
    10. However, the test page printed showed it to be printed by HP Laserjet 1015 PCL 5e
    11. Then again I tried to print another page by choosing HP Laserjet 1010 from the printing wizard which was successfully done
    12. I could now print using both 1015 and 1010 choices from the in the printing wizard
    13. It looks like I may have somehow made Windows Vista accept HP Laserjet 1010 as HP Laserjet 1015. In the bargain both of them got listed successfully as printers

    ReplyDelete
  4. I got the Vista x64 driver from http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=306507&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=306505&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=2100 and was able to use a combination of that and the XP drivers to install on Win7 with no probs at all. Thanks for this blog, without it I'd have thought I was done with this little workhorse but it's apparently gonna keep on going.

    Regards
    Gerard

    ReplyDelete

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