HP LASERJET 4 PLUS ON WINDOWS 10

[trarawaylick]

Hi there,  Pushkin 1

just for the record I'd like to acknowledge the super accurate solution  you have posted to the problem  I have had for months and months which is connecting my fabulous Laserjet 4 to any modern pc.

My laptop is an acer Aspire V3 571 and I just could not find any connector lead from the printer port (probably 36 pins) to a usb port on my laptop.

Today, 10th of june 2016!!! I came across your answer to the problem, just  by chance, at it finally worked perfectly!!!!!!!! I can now print from my pc to the Laserjet printer. I can get 7000 yes seven thousand copies with one cartrifge which costs approximately £40 u,k pounds.  So with your permission i have copied and pasted your reply in case others like me miss it. I would like to add that at the almost last step where you find yourself to make a choice  about ports: where you will find "virtual usb". in my pc I had a choice of:  box to tick then:  usb001 or 002 or 003 exc and at one point there was a chice for usb 00whatever number   virtual printer for........  dots dots. At that point I clicked on ADD printer and WOW my Laserjet 4 printer appered amongst the list of my other printers!!!

I didn't bother with the test page my Laserjet started printing immediately.

So many, many thanks to our friend Pushkin who solved the mistery. Brilliant, I am so happy!!!!  Here follows  Pushkin's solution:

08-12-2015 10:37 PM

rfk15n is brilliant!!!!!  Like rfk15n, I moved from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and have a LaserJet 4.  I just didn't understand the part of his/her instruction about the "virtual usb port."  Eventually, the Microsoft people helped me.  What rfk15n was saying was that, when you are manually installing the printer (LaserJet 4 or 4 Plus), you will have a choice to make about ports.  I kept blowing past that.  Don't blow past it, but click on the choices in the port area.  That's where you will find the "virtual usb."  Click on that.  Then click on the LaserJet 4 or 4 Plus in the list that Windows 10 provides, as appropriate for your printer.  When you click to print the test page, it should work like a charm.  (I kept getting error messages and couldn't get my printer to work before I got the port problem fixed.)  You do NOT need to get any kind of special parallel USB converter that is "windows 10 certified."  It is all in the port you click.

[Pushkin1]

Glad it worked!

[JeriR]

After reading a comment on a forum about how a generic PCL5 printer driver should allow an older HP printer to work with Windows 10, I googled, found, and downloaded such a driver, then added a printer associating this driver with the name Laserjet 4m (my old model).  I can't say if it will work for all printer features, but it allowed my printer to print the test page and a Word doc without difficulty.  Sorry, I don't remember precisely where I found the driver.

[Pushkin1]

So glad it worked. 

Now, those of us who use Laser Jet 4s are going to have a new problem.  HP has decided to stop making the printer cartridges that work with Laser Jet 4s.  Undoubtedly, that is so that we not only have to buy new printers that are ticky tacky (certainly not work horses), but have to buy more expensive cartridges that don't begin to have the output of the cartridges for the Laser Jet 4s.  Ugh! 

[TulipsMom]

The first fix described in my original post for getting the duplexer online no longer worked to turn on the duplexer when I had to do a clean install of Windows 10 Pro without an upgrade (no windows 7 in the background). The choices for print and manage this printer were grayed out. Try this, which worked for me:

Go into devices and printers and select the 4Plus

right click and select this as the default printer. Be sure a green checkmark appears on the printer icon.

Next, go into a word processor and open a document.

Click on File > print.  In this window be sure the 4Plus is the selected printer (it should be if it is set to default). If not, select it from the dropdown menu of printers.

Click on the printers button (which will be to the right of the name of the printer).

In the new window, right click on the 4Plus printer icon and choose properties.

Click on the security tab, here the choices for print and manage printer are not grayed out.

If not already highlighted, click on everyone from the upper list and under permissions for everyone check print and manage this printer.

Then click on the device settings tab and choose installable options.

Beside duplex unit choose installed from the drop-down menu.

Click apply and then ok.

Interestingly this caused the choices for print and manage printer to be accessible from the control panel > devices and printers window as well.

GOOD LUCK!!

TulipsMom

[TulipsMom]

I get my Laserjet 4 Plus cartriges from a supply place that refills them, Im sure that refilled ones will be available for quite some time to come.   just find a reliable local supplier.

[chuckstarck]

Unlike any other posts in this forum, I need the printer driver for windows 10. Or 64bit for windows 7 I guess.

Mine is a Laserjet 4, although I've used the Plus version drivers many times.

I have a print server on my home network connected to this printer that handles the connection via IP. I don't have an issue with usb ports because of this but I can not find a sutable driver. I can "talk" to my printer via many drivers but I'm getting weird results. I get a print page with what looks like a printer graphic (sorta) on one page, then the next page (shoudn't be a next page) has "ERROR, invalid font", which shouldn't be an issue from windows fonts, all work fine on the windows 7 PC. I don't havce the drivers from the original 7 install as this machine (laptop) had a full clean install of windows 10

I do know my printer has PostScript, that may be an issue. Is there a proper PCL driver available anywhere. I've tried the links in this thread and now they are all but dead.

Any help appreciated, thanks

[TulipsMom]

If the Laserjet 4-Plus driver has worked in the past, and that is the only one available (mine is a Plus and I am running it with a driver that was found within Windows 10 Pro, so I dont know if the non-plus driver is there or not) why not just use the Plus one?   I guess I don't understand what the issue is because windows 7 had the drivers and windows 10 recognizes the printer.  Are you saying it doesn't recognize your printer because it cant see that it is a Plus model?

[chuckstarck]

My comment was that it's not a USB / Parallel issue for me, it's the driver. I have a print server, it has the parallel connection one one side, Ethernet on the other side. All the thread focus is toward USB/Parallel local issues and how to find that port. The missing driver was my issue. Why Windows 10 can't have PCL 5 universal driver makes no sense.

I don't have windows 7 on that machine any more. The issue here is that HP denies there is a printer driver for a HP4/M/Plus that works with windows 10.

It is mentioned that if you upgraded from windows 7 to 10, the driver exists on your machine.

After giving up 20 times (I don't give up), I found the PCL 5 driver on the HP site after two days of dinking around.

This link gets you to believe there is nothing that works for windows 10

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=4157320

Driverscape says you have all the right drivers, DUH... no hp4 driver.

Windows 10 does not include the PCL 5 driver

But indeed you can download the windows 64bit driver for windows 7 and it does work.

SO, you don't have to go through all the compatibility issues, just install the 7 driver, it automatically sets up everything and calls the printer Universal PCL Driver and it works.

[JNHM]

The solution was for me  was this link from priro post.  THANK YOU!:

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=4157320&swItemId=fp_148007_1&swEnvOid=419...

This post solved a problem that surfaced for me following a normal Windows update. I almost gave up and was shopping for a replacment to my trusted HP Laserjet 4 Plus.  I tried all other remedies but this link brought my Laserjet 4 Plus back to normal operation.  I had reset the printer from its control panel more than once, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers and the paralel printer USB utility and adapter several times, but the best I could do was to get continuous printing of blank pages.

I suggest you reset the printer using the printr control panel before installing the drivers from the link above. To reset to default and erase printer buffer, turn printer on and wait for it to warm up till on-line indicator lights on.  Press on-line button to take it off line. Press and hold the shift and reset (Menu) button for about ten seconds till the display shows Reset *.  Then hit the on-line button and wait till is cycles to "Ready" again.