Color Laserjet 4500 on Windows 7 - 64 bit > Share with XP - 32 bit > Need Additional 32-bit Drivers

[otisalex]

Here's the setup:

Desktop: Windows 7 Professional - 64 bit with Color Laserjet 4500, shared, connected and working fine. The name of the driver is HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5.

Laptop: Windows XP Professional - 32 bit.

No network problems. Laptop sees the printer, but can't connect without the correct additional 32-bit drivers installed on the desktop. The only drivers I've been able to find are listed here. When I try to add under host printer properties/sharing/additional drivers, none of the downloaded .inf files are accepted.

Since Windows 7 installed a perfectly good 64-bit driver, there must be a compatible 32-bit driver that cab be added to allow the XP laptop to connect to this printer- but I have not been able to find it!

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Rob

[Bob_Headrick]

The 32 bit XP drivers are available here.  

[otisalex]

Thanks Bob. I tried both the PCL 5c and PCL 6 drivers. When I point Windows 7 to the .inf file I still get:

"The specified location does not contain the driver HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5 for the requested processor architecture."

Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated! I do know that in order to add an additional driver, the name of the 64-bit Windows 7 driver (HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5) and the added 32-bit driver must match exactly.

Rob

[otisalex]

I edited the following 2 lines in the hpbf231i.inf file as follows, so the names match:

Printer="HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5"
DiskID1="HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5 Printer Driver Disk

Now I'm getting a different error:

"The selected driver must be installed remotely from a x86 computer using Type 3 (user mode) drivers.

[otisalex · Accepted solution]

I got it to work:

I copied the extracted driver files (with the modified hpbf231i.inf file) to the client XP laptop.

I used "Add A Printer" on the laptop, installed as a network printer, pointed to the shared printer, and when prompted, pointed to the hpbf231i.inf file on the laptop.

What a time eating P.I.T.A.! But it works!

Rob

[Bob_Headrick]

I would suggest installing the PCL6 driver on your XP machine, then on the XP machine do the following:  Start, Settings, Printers and Faxes, Add a Printer, Next, Local Printer, Next, Create a Port, Local Port, \\Computername\Printername (use the actual share name for the computer and printer), OK, Have Disk, point to the directory where the driver was installed (default C:\clj4500pcl6win2kxp).

[Bob_Headrick]

Never mind, I see you got it.  That's what happens here when I start to reply and then get distracted in mid response :-). 

[otisalex]

Thanks, Bob! Actually I aready switched it over to your suggested configuration, using the PCL 6 drivers. It works either way. Any particular advantage to either setup? Is the PCL 6 a better/newer driver?

Rob

[Bob_Headrick]

There is no particular advantage to either method once you get things set up.  The second method may be easier to set up as you do not have to edit the files. 

As for the choices between the PCL6, PCL 5 or PS files, here is what HP says.

[otisalex]

Thanks so much for your excellent help, Bob!

The Win7 driver on the Desktop machine is PCL 5, so with this setup I've got both drivers available if I happen upon an application that works better on one.

Rob