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‎12-29-2019 05:46 AM

HP Recommended
Product: HP ENVY 5640
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

I've just spent 3 days trying to get an HP ENVY 5640 to work again on Windows 10.  It stopped working after a Windows update I think.  I went round numerous cycles of uninstalling and reinstalling everything, including using printui /s to manually remove drivers and everything else in HP's knowledge base and interactive support, as well as Microsoft's print troubleshooter and HP's print and scan doctor.  When installing via the HP installer it would detect the printer, both on the network and on USB, but would then report failing to communicate with it.  Adding the printer through windows settings would seem to work, but then the printer would show "status unavailable".

 

I eventually found the answer in this archived thread:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-Archive-Read-Only/Printer-status-unavailable/m-p/6457154/high...

The registry changes in that post weren't needed; the essential missing element was deleting the W32X86 and x64 folders from within c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers before attempting to reinstall the printer.  (The print spooler service must be stopped to do this.)  Some old junk in one of those folders must have been preventing the reinstall from working correctly.

 

I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else find the solution, and to suggest that HP might want to add this to their support information and/or to the Print and Scan Doctor application.

1 REPLY 1

‎12-31-2019 12:02 PM

HP Recommended

Hi,

Great to see that the steps have been helpful and got your problem resolved.

 

Please be aware, this kind of issue is due to an OS (Windows) problem, not due to any problem with the printer software in any way.

 

This involves steps changing your operating system configuration and driver files too.

 

I would not see how it can be involved in any printer-specific diagnostics utility and would be too dramatic for automatic correction, how about a user having multiple printers? this will affect and damage any other printer driver as a result, even if the user has multiple printers, and not only an HP's one...

 

Hope that makes sense,

 

Shlomi



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