Windows XP driver for a LaserJet 1200 printer attached to a Windows 7 computer

[JcB-G-TX]

Where do I find the driver that Windows XP running on a 32-bit PC wants to be able to add a printer that is connected to a Windows 7 64-bit PC both of which are on my home network?

I have worked through the process of adding a printer to my Windows XP machine I can get to the point in the Add Printer Wizard after browsing for the printer and selecting it that I click Next and answer that I do actually want to add the printer that is on the Windows 7 PC. I am then presented with a dialogue box that says that the INF file is needed. I have downloaded the drivers that are on http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=58928&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4063 and tried each of them by pointing to the directory where they are each contained. When I do this I am told that "Windows cannot locate a suitable driver. Contact your administrator for help in locating and installing a suitable driver".

Where can I find this suitable driver for a Windows XP PC to print on a printer that is attached to a Windows 7 PC on my network?

[TheOldMan]

Just an FYI, I went to the page you linked and found this hp LaserJet 1200/1220 PCL 5e driver, which contains the INF file.  Did you follow the instructions on that page?  There definitely is a INF file in the bundle.

[JcB-G-TX]

I did exactly what is says to do on that page. I am well aware that there is an INF file in the file because I have seen it when I go browsing for the INF file in the Add Printer Wizard and I have seen it when I navigate to the directory using Windows Explorer. Furthermore, in order to get the the point where the Add Printer Wizard says that it is not a suitable driver you have to have pointed it to an INF file. However, the Add Printer Wizard on Windows XP does not recognize it as a suitable driver.

I also tried adding it as an additional dirver for an x86 machine on the Windows 7 PC by downloading the file to the Windows 7 PC and extracting the contents to the disk. Windows 7 says that "The specified location does not contain the driver HP LaserJet 1200 Series PCL 5 for the requested architecture."

I am at a loss as to what to do to obtain a driver that will allow me to print on the printer attached to my Windows 7 PC from my Windows XP PC. The HP site says it is the correct driver and both Windows XP and Windows 7 say that it is not.

I have another PC on the network running Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium, I was able to add the printer that is on the Windows 7 PC to it without any problems.

[TheOldMan]

WinXP is not as filling to share with the network.  I have not used the printer sharing in the manner described, so cannot help.  It does not make much sense that the supposed driver does not work.  I have run across where the printer had to be connected to the PC first, during setup and then returned to the original placing after the problem PC has been completed.  Might want to try that.  The easiest might be to network the printer instead of sharing it through another PC.

Good luck

[JcB-G-TX]

Microsoft advertises that networking PCs running Windows Vista and subsequent versions of the OS with PCs running Windows XP is supported. However, I have had problems in the past networking three or more Windows XP PC together, sometimes for reasons that I cannot fathom one PC could not see the other PCs in the network.

Curiously there should be a driver for the LaserJet 1200 already on the Windows XP PC as it was connected directly to the printer just a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason the printer setup wizard cannot find that driver.

I tried reconnecting the printer to the XP PC and installing the driver. It installed but Windows warned me that it had not recieved Microsoft Loop certification and dire things could happen if I proceeded with the installation. I did it anyway, nothing dire happened and I printed a test page from that PC. However, I still could not install the printer as a networked or shared printer.

I would truely prefer to connect the printer directly to the network but it is an old printer that does not have a network port. It only has is a parallel port and a USB port.

Since Microsoft no longer supports XP appealing to them for help is futile.

[TheOldMan]

Networking a parallel printer is probably no longer supported.  I had a network device at one time for a parallel printer , but networking a USB printer should be doable.  Many of the newer routers have USB ports specifically for network access for printers.  Depends on how much you desire this printer to be networked.

You mentioned this printer was connected to the winXP computer at one time.  Assuming it worked, then networking this printer should be easy.

[JcB-G-TX]

My router does have a USB port and I tried installing the printer that way when I first connected it to the Windows 7 PC but it did not have a driver installed at that time so I connected the printer directly to the PC. The downside of connecting the printer in that fashion is that I have to install aditional software on each PC to make them recognize that there is a printer attached to the router.

I tried connecting the printer back to the XP PC and installing the driver. See my edited earlier response for the results of that experiment.

[JcB-G-TX · Accepted solution]

I have found a solution to this problem but it is not the capability to print a document from my XP computer on a shared printer attached to my Windows 7 computer. The solution that I implemented was to connect my XP computer to the printer via a parallel cable. I went with this approach for two reasons.

First, I became aware that none of the drivers for this printer that are available for Windows 7 64-bit allow me to print a document double sided or as a booklet (of course booklet printing depends on the ability to print double sided) from my Windows 7 computer. The dirver for this printer on my XP (32-bit) computer provides those capabilities. The Windows 7 64-bit driver that Microsoft supplies via Windows Update appears to support these capabilities, yet when those options are chosen the document prints single sided. The Windows 7 64-bit universal printer driver for this printer that is available from the HP website does not even purport to provide these capabilities. It is as though HP has mostly abandoned this printer. I understand that it is an old printer, but what I find incredible is that it was not that old of a printer when Windows 7 64-bit was new, so why can't HP provide the latest version of the driver that could perform those functions? (Of course I may just be assuming that at some point it could). Surely it cannot take up that much space on their server. The other question is why can't the universal printer driver for Windows 7 64-bit provide those capabilities? The XP 32-bit driver that I have, which is also a universal printer driver that I downloaded several years ago from the HP site, provides those capabilities. I have not tried dowloading a newer XP 32-bit version of the driver to see if it has been stripped of these capabilities.

Second, I chose to use the parallel connection because my XP computer has a parallel port, I already had a parallel cable that was not being used and doing so allows me to have the printer permanently connected to both computers. Attempting to connect both computers using a USB cable would necessitate manually switching the USB connection from one computer to the other whenever I wanted to print from the computer that was not connected.