Problem connecting Officejet 6500 printer to desktop

[tanebhan]

This is kind of a weird problem, and not sure what's going on. I was trying to connect my dad's new HP Officejet 6500 printer to his desktop. The driver installation gets to the step where you're supposed to turn on the printer and connect the USB cable. You do this, and nothing happens. My thoughts are that it would be the printer, the USB cable, or the USB ports on his desktop.

However, to help troubleshoot, I then proceeded to connect his laptop and properly install the drivers on my laptop that I had brought along. To me, this shows that it's not the printer or the cable and that it must be his USB ports. However, the weird thing is that he can still connect his iPod through his USB ports and that seems to work properly.

Any thoughts on why I can't get his computer (a 5 year old Dell with XP installed) to see the printer? I've completely run out of ideas of things to try.

 

[Michael52x]

Possibly a file did not get copied because of a firewall or anti-virus program. Turn off in security center, and try again. Using the CD? or just the driver from HP?

"Impatience will reward you with dissatisfaction" RMS Cosmics'97

 

[tanebhan]

Hmmmm.... That's a good point. I'm pretty sure that I had turned everything off prior to installation, but maybe not. I'll give that a shot.

Nope. No cd. Just downloaded the driver off of the HP website.

 

[Buff1]

I've had some difficulty with my 6540 but it has always printed on both my XP (now Vista) and WinME computers. My problem was getting the driver installed properly.

Try deleting the printer, then connect it as a HP DJ600 series printer. See if it prints.

If that works, you know it is the drive installation and/or
a security issue and not the port or cable.

I was finally able to get the 6540 drivers installed on both machines and just have a few little quirks that I can get around. for the most part it prints flawlessly.

 

[tanebhan]

OK. Just gave that a shot. Uninstalled EVERYTHING, rebooted and then reinstalled the drivers, and it seems to recognize the printer now when I connect the USB cable. I think something might've gotten hosed in the registry on the initial install.