Designjet 450C on Windows 10 32bit - Solved!

[JonathanTwynham]

For some reason I couldnt download the Designjet Universal Print Driver - kept saying not available for my selected product or system. I assume as im not running Windows 10 64-bit?

Couldnt seem to find a work around for this and the actual Designjet 450C driver would not install under Windows 10 32bit.. kept getting a kernal driver error - even after following the support post about disabling spooler, renaming folders and running the registry edit.

I then attempted the Designjet 430 driver and that installed. It got me thinking, my DesignJet is not actually a 450C, its a 430 that I ran a firmware modification on years ago to convert into a 450C and as it must be basically the same driver I wondered if I could edit the 430 driver to suit a 450C.

Yes, I know its an old printer, Yes, I know most people will have binned it by now but I know there are people like me who refuse to throw away perfectly working hardware just because of lack of support (I had a similar issue with my ATI FireGL V7350 in Win 10 and I got that working too!)

It seems its entirely possible and works.. so heres what I did (just in case anyone else runs into the same issue):

(I have listed as instructions using official HP source drivers (of the HP website) - I could have linked to my modified drivers but most people like me are probably not keen on downloading unknown drivers from someone random - who knows whats in it??

Download hpdj430umgl86en.exe - for Designjet 430 &  Windows XP 32bit
Run exe and allow to extract to a folder (eg. c:\dj430\)

Download pl132en.exe - for designjet 450c printer windows nt ()
run exe and allow to extract to a folder (eg. c:\dj450c\)

Create a third folder (eg. c:\dj450c-win10-32)

Copy the contents of the 430c folder into the dj450c-win10-32 folder

Open c:\dj450c\OEMSETUP.inf in notepad

Find the Designjet 450c printer listed under [Models] and copy the whole line to clipboard

in my case ("HP DesignJet 450C (D/A1) by HP" =hpltdrv1.DLL,LPTENUM\Hewlett-PackardDesigC327) as mine is the A1 model.

Open c:\dj450c-win10-32\DSGJ400.inf in notepad

Go to [Models] and paste the line from clipboard underneath

Save the file and close down notepad.

Now you can go to 'Control Panel' -> 'Devices and Printers' -> 'Add Printer'

When it starts searching click 'The printer I want isnt listed'

Select 'Add a local printer or network printer with manual settings'

Configure how you have it connected

In my case 'Existing port' and 'LPT1 Printer Port'

Click 'Next' -> 'Have Disk' -> 'Browse'

Find the modified driver c:\dj450c-win10-32\DSGJ400.inf

Click 'Open' -> 'OK'

Select the printer for which you just copied the line into the driver file

Click 'Next' -> (can change name here etc) then 'Next'

At this point you may get a big red box about unsigned drivers, just 'Install Anyway' (afterall you just got the drivers from HP right?)

Choose if you want to share or not -> 'Next'

Now.. try a test print.. in theory it should work for you as it did for me! Its not guarenteed but its worth ago because mine did!

Its also worth reading the readme.txt file in the original 'c:\dj450c' folder as it has some helpful hints to solve printing issues (memory etc)

Looking through the original dj450c driver it has a lot of other printers listed so this may well work for those too!

****If this helps anyone else great, if not no worries, it worked for me so I thought I'd post it in case!!****