Day three

Jan. 10th, 2011 09:39 pm
altivo: Running Clydesdale (running clyde)
[personal profile] altivo
Finishing hem of rug on the big loom in preparation for a new warp. Distracted by Gary's problems with his new laptop. Getting it to connect to a network printer was much more of an issue than it should have been. Seems that Windows 7 will only load drivers for newer HP deskjet printers from Windows Update. You can't install them from CD or by download from HP's web site. Since the printer in question is attached by USB to a Windows XP workstation and shared over Windows networking, there is no way to get the driver installed.

The only answer that worked was to unplug the USB cable from the XP machine and plug it directly into the laptop. This gets the driver downloaded from Windows Update. Then you have to manually edit the printer configuration to connect it to a network port. Only after that can you unplug the USB cable (otherwise the printer driver seems to erase itself.) This is incredibly boneheaded, HP and Microsoft. You are saying that someone who has no internet connection cannot install a new HP deskjet printer at all. Apparently it isn't allowed. You also appear to be saying that you "forgot" that printing over a small local network has always been supported by Windows. Well, it does work once you figure it out, but absolutely nothing on the HP support site tells you how to do this. All they do is tell you how to install the printer as a local USB device, assuming of course that you have an internet connection to download the driver. No internet? OK, then, no driver, no printer for you.

Red went to obedience class tonight. I took a bunch of photos but haven't offloaded them yet. I didn't want to use the flash, so they may be blurry. They looked OK on the camera's viewscreen though.

Tomorrow the warping can begin. And it's supposed to snow, possibly 3 inches or more, so it will be a good day to stay home and get it done.

Date: 2011-01-11 03:48 pm (UTC)
deffox: (Default)
From: [personal profile] deffox
I would blame HP a lot more than Microsoft. Though I have done a similar procedure to install print drivers for printing to a computer with an older operating system.

Our current HP office all-in-one is a total pain with its software. The first insult is the user agreement, whose terms include nonsense like the driver can only be installed on a single computer for a networked office printer. The install is huge and buggy. Plus the software insists on being memory resident and causes my computer to randomly drop to desktop when inside a game. While I hope to get several years out of the current printer, next time we go with a non-HP brand.

Date: 2011-01-11 04:45 pm (UTC)
hrrunka: A small radio transceiver (tech)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
I'm led to believe there were problems over here at a large government communications establishment back when Microsoft first decided that every new Windows installation would require Net connectivity in order to validate itself before it would deign to run...

Date: 2011-01-12 07:14 am (UTC)
hrrunka: Frowning face from a character sheet by Keihound (thinking)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
This was a while back; could have been early in XP's life, I guess? Might even have been the reason corporate keys don't call home now?

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