HP LJ 1200: PS and PCL6 drivers do not work, only PCL5

[sdjkov]

Hello everyone,

I have an older desktop PC, but it works fine (Intel G850 CPU 2.90 GHz, 6 GB RAM, Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit ) and a HP Laserjet 1200 printer, which works fine, too, but only with the PCL 5 driver.

The printer is connected to the LP1 printer port and it doesn't have an USB connection. The original installation CD is lost, so I downloaded the PS driver and the PCL 6 driver from the official HP website, but the drivers won't work. I either get error messages or the system shows that the printer is printing, but in reality it does nothing. I turned on ECP (Extended Capability Port) in BIOS, but it doesn't help. I deinstalled/reinstalled the drivers several times, but again, they won't work. I wonder why is this happening, since I have used this printer in the past and it worked fine, regardless of the driver chosen. I googled for solutions and all I could find is: connect, reconnect, deinstall, reinstall, clean the registry etc... etc... I wonder why so much complications just to install a printer? This is not some demanding piece of technology, it worked for me in the past on a much weaker machine in Windows XP. The PC is obviously working well and the printer, too.

Thank you for your help in advance.

[sdjkov · Accepted solution]

Something weird just happened. I'm sorry that I can't remember what I did, but suddenly the PS driver is working. I remember that I disabled my network adapter, because I wanted to turn off my firewall/antivirus software, cause I thought that this might be the culprit. So I disabled the network adapter, but I'm not sure if I have disabled the antivirus/firewall, too. Then I removed the existing PS printer from my "Printers" in Control Panel and I installed an older HP LJ 1200 PS driver (2018) as Administrator, and now it works. Previously I have tried to install that older driver, but it didn't work. Then I tried to install as an Administrator, but that alone didn't work. So if you have the same problems as I did, try some of these things, maybe it'll work. Now the printer works with the Antivirus/Firewall on and while being online. Thanks.