Setting the printer properties makes the driver unusable

[zaccog]

HP ENVY 5547 (firmware updated)

Windows 10 64bit (recently upgraded from Windows 7)

PC Admin

After the installation, the printer prints well with HP Smart application and also with other reasonable applications (MSOffice or Adobe products) , as long as you do not access the printer properties of such applications. When you do,  colors disappear and double-sided printing is no longer available. At this point, when you try to print from HP Smart again "color mode" is stuck on "monochrome".

I did several trials with several combination of uninstallation and re-installation of available HP drivers (stand-alone or not), softwares (full-pack or not), etc. I already tried a root level re-install... no success.

It turned out that as soon as you enter the Printer Properties in any application other than HP Smart, the printer can no longer print in color and double-side. It seems like somethng gets spoilt when the application tries to read (not even to write) the drivers settings.

A workaround that seems to work is the following. Open the Windows 10 settings advanced printer properties window, change the drvier to <whatever> and apply, change back the driver HP 5547 and apply. In this way you can again print colorfoula and double-sided from HP Smart and also from other applications provided that you do not enter the Printer Properties page. If you do, then you get the same faulty behaviour as above.

Now, the problem is that it might be ok to be able to print only from HP Smart, though it is quite unconfortable to search for the photo or document on the file system every time.... But, HP Smart itself reports that it cannot print other than PDF or photos. So, if you have to print a .doc, .docx, .xls and so on and so forth, then.... ? And something you have to enter the Printer Properties tab.

Somewhere, they say that reverting to Windows 7 drivers might be a solution. Unfortunately those drivers are no longer available. Actually the printer worked like a charm with Windows 7.

Can anybody help, please?

[zaccog · Accepted solution]

UPDATE:

I executed the folliwing procedure:

- remove all HP software
- remove the printer
- root reset of the print server (via printui.exe /s)
- installed HP drivers and software using HPEasyStart_10_5_4216_12.exe

I did not install HP Smart. Everything seems to be working properly in the sense that I can print from every application (Word, PDF reader, ....), colorful and double-sided.

Is HP Smart the issue, here? Which management tool should I use, e.g. to scan?

[zaccog]

FURTHER UPDATE

Installed HP Smart from Windows Store. Everything seems to be working fine. May be the order of installation of applications, drivers, etc. counted? For the moment it is resolved. Sorry for the noise.