[SOLVED] Usb printing in Win7

I have an HP officejet 4500 g510g usb printer that is not recognized by Win 7 home premium 64 bit. I have downloaded the latest drivers. I have made sure all previous installations were uninstalled. I have tried several times to install using the latest software drivers and all goes well until until I am asked to plug in the usb cable. I plug in the usb cable only when prompted (I hear the familiar bump bump). The software detects the device then it waits for device to setup. After about 20 min, it times out and is unable to install the drivers. Without the drivers, windows puts in as an unspecified device with no drivers. It totally does not recognize it as a usb printer at all. I have installed this same printer on a little netbook with the same drivers and usb cable with no problems. The netbook is also running win 7 but it is the 32 bit windows starter version.

I tried installing two other printers on this same computer with the same results. It simply does not recognize the device and will not load the usb printing support driver nor the manufacturers device driver. Curiously, the previous printer that worked fine on this machine was an HP usb printer. It was getting old and the paper kept jamming which is why I am attempting to replace it. Unfortunately, that printers not recognized now either.

I have spent two weeks trolling forums and everyones solutions do not seem to work for me.

Oh yeah, I also tried installing it as a network printer and it installs fine. Unfortunately, it will not scan when connected this way. Scanning is a must.

I have cleared the device manager and uninstalled the drivers. Checked the registry and temp files. I'm pretty sure all traces of previous installations are gone. I tried installing it manually through add printer but there is no drop down for USB001 virtual printer port when trying to add a local port. I think win7 does not offer this option unless it detects a usb printer connected so that was a dead end too.

Any advice or help with this would surely be appreciated. I am at my wits end.

Well just FYI, 64bit drivers are normally different than 32bit drivers so the fact it works on your netbook does not mean it will work in 64-bit (without 32-bit emulation such as a virtual environment).

That being said, supposedly 64-bit is supported with the HP officejet 4500 drivers. Are you using the driver dated 2010-03-01 , Version:13.0.0? And are you trying the basic driver, enterprise, or full feature package?

Also, are you sure your USB port is correct, right version, works with other devices? have you tried a different usb slot? is it the same usb cable that works with the netbook (otherwise I would offer that it can also be a cable problem)?

Thank you very much for your reply, Trainable man. Yes to all. I have tried installing using both the basic and full feature package. I have used both the cd and the downloaded drivers from hp ( they are ver 13). I have tried installation of the software with windows services disabled. Also with my antivirus and firewall disabled. Still no go.

I have tried several of the usb ports both on the front and the back of the case. Also, I have tried a couple different usb cables and am currently using the one that worked with the netbook.

I have also tried installing it via ethernet cable. The HP installation fails at the end this way as well but I can add the printer via "add printer" button and select network port and then select the printer from a list. The only problem with this method is that it will not scan and scanning is a must. Scanning is a no go regardless of which program I try to scan with. Win 7 does not recognize it as an imaging device for some reason.

I have had HP tech support helping me but with no success. They have been pretty great but I don't think its HP issue because I had the same problem with a canon that I tried to connect to the same machine.

I'm starting to wonder if I have a currupt win7 file. Perhaps the usbmon.dll or the usbprint.sys files. I don't usually like messing with these files unlesss there is an indication. I know these files are present and I get no error referencing these files. I am truly stumped!

Very slight chance but you have not specified what your computer is in system specs. It is possible if it is quite old that it has USB 1.1 connections rather than USB 2.0 (USB 2.0 started showing up in devices around 2001/2002). If you have USB 1.1 then a 2.0 device will not work in that USB slot.

If you do have USB 2.0 then what I would suggest is that you find the icon in device manager that is marked as unknown and right-click in Properties, Driver TAB, select "update this driver" and choose "browse my computer for driver software" then point it to the expanded drivers you downloaded (not an exe, you need a folder with .inf files) and see if it can install that way.

And just FYI, the print drivers and scan drivers are normally two completely different drivers. It's very common for the printer to work but scanning to still need the drivers installed.

Here are my Specs:

Win 7 Home Premium
Asus CM5671
Processor Pentium Dual Core
CPU E5500 @ 2.80 Ghz and 2.80 Ghz
Ram 4.00 (3.75 Useable )
64 Bit

It is a little over a year old .

I do have 2.0 Usb
tried all you suggested and still nothing ,

Now found that there is some issues with the USB itself , All slots work ( tried a web cam in all slots and it worked ) but tried the mouse and keyboard in other slots and they only work in the original slot they we installed in , any suggestions ?

Your usbstor.inf/usbstor.pnt/usbstor.sys files may be corrupt OR there is a good chance it's registry corruption.

you might try this (found HERE):
Or, of course, a complete reinstall should fix all you system file & registry issues (just be sure to back-up your data first and have all your programs available for reinstall).

This states it is for Vista I have Wndows 7 Home Premium ( 64 Bit ) will it still work ?

Vista and Win7 are "cut from the same cloth", so to speak. Definitely worth trying.

This was very helpful. I edited the registry (scary) and deleated the infcach.1 file. I rebooted. Then I ran the HP installation software with newly downloaded drivers and it installed without a hitch through the usb. It gives me the usb virtual printing port and everything. However, scanning still does not work. It looks like the drivers loaded up fine except for the scanning drivers. Win 7 does not recognize it as an imaging device and puts it in unknown devices. I tried installing the device driver manually and it gave me the followind error:

Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

The system cannot find the file specified.

I have tried pointing to the cd and the driver software that I downloaded from HP site. Same results.

Again, scanning and printing works fine through the usb on the netbook with win 7 32 bit. I compared drivers between the two for this device and found two driver file misssing. They are :

HPFPA70W.VDF
HPFPA70W.DLL

I assume these are the scanning drivers that refuse to install.

Those may well be the drivers it needs, where did you get them? There needs to be a .inf file (or an exe) to tell the system what to do with them and it apparently is looking for a missing file (or it may not be in the proper directory to be found). Did it specify what file? Can you give me a link to the software you downloaded? I want to see if it is zipped or an exe or what.

The fact that it works from your netbook merely means those drivers ARE installed. And because the netbook is 32-bit and this computer is 64-bit it is highly likely they do not use the same drivers so you can't simply copy them from the netbook.