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I had a similar problem.
My desktop has been running XP Pro for a long time now and I finally decided to switch over to Vista Ultimate. I had bought my D1660 in December and have been using it with XP with no problems. But it took me hours to get the **bleep** thing up and running in Vista. Here's what I did (...just skip all the way to the bottom if you don't want to read through all the problems I had 
):
1st Attempt
- Did a clean install of Vista (formatted the HD), installed all the drivers I needed for my motherboard, and saved an image of the HD to my network.
- I had downloaded the newest installation software from HP earlier, so I used that to install the printer (made sure to run the app as administrator).
- The installation got to the point where it asks you to turn on the printer and plug in the USB cable. When I did that a pop-up from Windows told me that it found a new device and was asking if it should look for drivers. I have seen this a lot with other installations so I ignored it and let the installation run.
- After an hour nothing was happening so I decided to kill the installation and reboot the system to try again.
2nd Attempt
- After the reboot I started the install again.
- Again it asked me to plug in the USB cable, and Windows asked me about the drivers again.
- I told Windows to automatically search for the drivers.
- When I did this the progress bar on the install actually started to move, but it only made it half way before crapping-out.
- The installation software was telling me that it couldn't communicate with the printer. It said that I needed to reboot my system and that it would continue to install afterwards.
3rd Attempt
- Since the software said that it couldn't communicate with the printer, I decided to change the USB cable to eliminate it as a potential source of the problem.
- After the reboot the installation started up again, but ended with the same results....can't communicate....looking for drivers....bla bla bla.
- So I killed the install (at least I thought I did), and rebooted the PC.
4th Attempt
- When the PC started up again the HP software automatically began to run again, so I killed it.
- This time I decided to download and install my Windows updates (all 90 of them) before I try and install the printer again.
- (3 hours later) the updates were completed and I rebooted the system.
- Annoyingly the HP software started up again on it own. But it still failed to complete.
- I tried running the install from the original CD that came with the printer but that didn't work either.
- So I said "screw it!" and decided to go ahead and install all my other software first, and then come back to the printer later. But the **bleep** HP software kept on launching itself every time I needed to reboot the system....AAARRRGGGHHH! ! 
5th Attempt
- I gave in and decided to re-image my HD. It's a good thing I saved a clean copy from earlier.
- Finished re-imaging the HD and decided to get all my Windows updates done and out of the way.
- (another 3 hours later) I have finished the updates and am now "standing on a cliff staring out onto the bad-lands that is HP print driver installation...
"
- At this point I realized that I don't use any of that extra "bloat-ware" that HP bundles with their drivers anyways, so I decided to see it Windows has a compatible one.
- I plugged in the printer, ignored the Windows pop-up, I went into Device Manager and found the printer under Other Devices (HP Diskette 1600 series).
- I right-clicked on it and selected Update Driver Software from the options menu.
- I told Windows to brows for the driver in the Windows folder on the C: drive.
- It found a compatible driver and installed it without and issues. But it also added another entry under Other Devices called HP Diskette 1600.
- I tried to get it to find another driver in the Windows sub-folder, but it couldn't find a compatible match. So I inserted the original HP CD and told it to look for one there. Woo Hoo...it worked!
- Finally all I had to do was manually add the printer through the control panel and it was done. (NOTE: make sure you tell Windows to use the USB port for the printer or else it won't work.)
*I forgot to mension that when I rebooted the system Vista said it found new hardware and wanted to install drivers (this was for the printer). I told it to automatically search for one on my computer and it found one and installed with no further issues. I also noted that in Device Manager There is only one entry now listed under Other Devices...(HP Deskjet 1600).
