Looking for drivers only, without the bloat

[Matthew_K_MPT]

I have an HP OfficeJet Pro 8025 All-in-One Printer that we want to connect to our printer server, but we don't want all the extra software application bloat to be installed with the driver. When I go to https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-officejet-pro-8020-all-in-one-printer-series/model/24208623 I can only find downloads that include applications with the driver - I see no option to only install the driver.

The HP Easy Start Printer Setup Software (Internet connection required for driver installation) version installed the least bundled applications, but it still included extra applications that we don't want on the print server. The HP OfficeJet Pro 8020 All-in-One EasyStart Printer Setup Software – Offline Use Only version was even worse, and installed an entire suite of applications.

Other printer manufacturers, like Canon, give us the ability to extract the specific drivers from the download - but these downloads have everything bundled into a single executable. (I can't find a way to single out just the driver.)

Anyone have any advice or know where I can get JUST the driver?

Thank you.

[Matthew_K_MPT · Accepted solution]

I found this reddit thread that has some good ideas. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/HmtULzZshe

There are several tricks that we can use to try and get to just the .dll and .inf files (aka just the drivers) and then when installing a printer select "have disk" and point to that directory to install the driver. (Tricks include using 7zip to extract or using the .exe to extract files to  %appdata% local temp folder and getting the .inf and .dll files there.)

I'll have to try some of these at the office tomorrow and see if one of them does the trick.

[Matthew_K_MPT]

After having checked, both the Appdata\local and 7Zip are able to isolate to just the .inf and .dll files needed.