Win10 Creators Update broke OJ7000 driver

[englishtim]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post here, so apologies in advance for any newbie errors - Moderators: please feel free to move this to a different board if necessary.

We have an OfficeJet 7000 (e809a) A3 printer, which has served us well for a while now - it's set up as a network printer, using an ethernet connection. It's worked fine under all versions of Windows up to and including the Windows 10 Anniversary Update in 2016. We've been successfully using the latest driver, downloaded from the official HP site (http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/COL31335/bi-110073-2/OJ_SF_7000E_Full_Win_WW_140_408-4.exe, dated 28/08/2014) 

However I've just updated our PCs to Win10 Creators, and this seems to have messed up the OJ7000 driver. The symptoms are:

- Some text in the driver dialogue-box is displayed in non-Western characters, truncated, or missing entirely;

- All drop-down lists are empty, making it impossible to configure the driver correctly.

I've tried:

- Uninstalling the driver;

- Running SFC /SCANNOW;

- Re-installing the driver via the Compatibility Assistant (I've tried settings for both Win7 & Win8);

- Uninstalling the HP driver and installing the Windows "In-OS" driver;

...but without success. All our PCs exhibit the same symptoms, so I'm reasonably certain that this isn't confined just to a specific set of hardware in the host PC.

I really don't want to have to replace the printer (it's been a decent workhorse), but I've run out of ideas about what to do next. For the record I've also posted this as a problem on the Microsoft Feedback Hub.

Any help the forum-members can offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Peace and Friendship,

englishtim

[englishtim]

UPDATE: I've found a workaround - it's a bit of a faff, but at least it means we don't have to junk our printer:

- In the new Win10-style Settings page for the printer, open the "Hardware properties" dialogue-box;

- On the "Settings" tab, click the "Devices and Printers Folder" button to open the old Windows 7-style Devices and Printers window;

- Find the printer in the list (I've used the Windows "In-OS" driver, so it's listed as "HP21C64F (HP Officejet 7000 E809a)");

- Right-click over the printer icon, and select either "Printing Preferences" or "Printer Properties". The dialogue-boxes that appear are formatted correctly, with all drop-down text present.

Bizarrely the dialogue-boxes that appear when using the links on the Win10-style Settings page are still corrupted. Weird...

Hope this helps.

Peace and Friendship,

englishtim