Print Drivers Only? (OfficeJet Pro 7740 for example)

[FHS_Dave]

It would be nice if HP printers all had a plain download for print drivers.  All I want/need are the driver inf files to install the drivers on our print servers.

Currently trying to load drivers for an OfficeJet Pro 7740 and there does not appear to be an easy way to get the drivers only. 

Am I missing something obvious, is there a driver deployment dl area I'm not aware of? 

[ShlomiL]

Hi,

Download the Basic Drivers from the HP Site, including a direct link below:
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software13/printers/OJ7740/Basic_Webpack_x64-40.16.1234-OJ7740_Basicx...

Either extract the webpack using any archive extractor, or double click it and as soon as the install dialog launches you may close it and locate its extracted folder as following:

Type %temp% into your Windows search bar, and open the latest HP Installation folder which starts with 7z (e.g. 7z1234S)m there you would find an Autorun.inf driver you may use to manually install the printer driver

[FHS_Dave]

I have been using that technique to get drivers for HP Printers but it is a bit of a workaround IMO and I'm finding that the drivers aren't trusted from the print server. 

For instance the 7740 driver above needs administrator approval to install on workstations vs other drivers not extracted like the process above.  Installing the drivers on individual machines is a bit of a pain in addition to the having to extract the drivers.    

[FHS_Dave]

I resolved my issue in a round about way.  

It would still be awsome if HP had a DL for professional use for drivers only so we don't have to pull from temp files.  

The bigger issue with the 7740 driver is that it isn't "package aware".   If the driver isn't package aware, it will not install the driver from the print server if the the driver is labeled "false" in Print Management. 

Packaged is a column in the Drivers tab on the print server Print Management console.  This is due to a somewhat recent KB from my research that buttoned up some print server related hack.   GPO settings were unsuccessful as well... even not prompting for installing or disabling administrator needing to install drivers.   

The fix is to either use an updated driver that is package aware (doesn't seem to be one for the 7740) or do a regedit on the print server changing this key for the drivers, PrinterDriverAttributes to the next numerical value... if it's a 2 make it a 3.  Then restart the print spooler service, refresh Print Mangement and now it shows are true in the packaged column.  

Printer/driver will now load via GPO with no admin pop up.