HP C5540 - Can;'t access photo tray or photo paper

[Echo_Lake]

@MarkinStPaul

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details). 

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

[ThatGuyFromSoMe]

Hi,

  I did not hear back from you yet. Please let me know whether your issue is resolved or you need additional help.

Regards,
GeorgeSoMe

-HP Social Media Support

I am an HP Employee

[MarkinStPaul]

My issue is not resolved. What I would like to see is support for all printer/scanner functions from all platforms, including web-based ones. The drivers for Windows 7 did provide full functionality and worked perfectly. After I moved to  Windows 10, and installed the Windows 10 HP "full featured" driver, I lost the ability to print using the photo tray. I could print photos using the main tray but was not able to control paper type and therefore amount of ink. The photos looked awful. I tried all the "solutions" suggested by HP support to no avail. Most of the time, after trying various settings, print jobs to the photo tray would seem to process but then just fail. (At the end of the month I found that each of these failed prints was counted against my instant ink budget even though no ink was used. I went way over on my budget.)

At this point I have abandoned Windows altogether. I was keeping it only because of the Windows 7 printer drivers. Windows 10 drivers did not work so I saw no reason to continue with Windows. I reconfigured the machine to run Ubuntu Linux and of course the generic driver there does not support all features and has the same issues.

As I said previously, what's needed is a printer "driver" that runs in the printer. One that allows all printing and scanning functionality to be accessed through a browser interface and does not depend on a specific platform. That is the only option to resolve my issue. HP's current web interface is a good start, it just does not support all functionality.

Over the years I have "thrown away" too many perfectly good printers because they no longer offered  "full featured" drivers. I am tired of it.

[MarkinStPaul]

OK, I'm back. I got rid of Ubuntu Linux and reinstalled Windows 10 on my laptop. I then decided I should try installing the printer drivers again. I am not sure if HP made changes or if it was updates to windows, but THE PRINTER NOW WORKS! I can select the photo tray and I can select photo paper as the target. Photo prints come out fine. I feel something must have changed as all the things I had tried earlier (documented above in this thread) did not work, all of which resulted in a "generic" printer interface that did not support full functionality.

So, I thank the various posters that suggested things to try but I mostly thank whoever/whatever finally fixed the problem.