Hi,

Can anyone help my figure out why my old HP DeskJet 500 printer does not print from Windows 95? Am I missing either new hardware and/or software for my old printer? I've tried installing and reinstalling the HP printer but that doesn't work. It just prints crap (looks like postscripts). Any suggestions? Oh, the website www.hardwarecentral.com/tips/tshooting was much help for my problem. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Try the hp.com site directly and see what driver they recommend. I have found that the "Full-blown" printer control software most manufacturers ship these days don't always behave well under Win95. If possible, when installing the software, select the option to load the PCL Driver alternative. Print quality won't suffer unless you're doing very sophisticated work,and as a rule - seems to be much better behaved when cooperating with the Windows Printing System. Good Luck!

Here's the story from a guy who knows:

Rob,

I upgraded to 98 about 6 months ago and they had included a DeskJet 500
driver so the problem was solved for the most part. I'd send it but I don't
think it's backwards compatible. Besides it doesn't really work any better
than the solution below. Still have some problems printing large documents
or articles which often corrupt about 3 pages in.

One thing I did figure out by process of elimination was that you can
download the HP DeskJet Portable driver from the HP web site (HREF="ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/printers/software/dj125en.exe">HP DeskJet Portable
Printer) and install that. It may even be on your CD. It works 95% of
the time. Sometimes you have to print large jobs a page at a time or they
corrupt. Seems odd that there is so little support for such a popular
printer. If I was a conspiracy theorist I might conclude that they are
trying to force us to upgrade.

Good luck.

Mike

I'm having identical problems with Win98 and the DJ500 printer. The printed document starts getting corrupted after two or three pages. One thing that changed when I upgraded to a new computer and switched from Win95 to Win98 is that the LPT1 port is now set up as an ECP (expanded capabilities port). Could this be related to printing problems with the Deskjet 500, and if so, can ECP settings be disabled?

I bought a used deskjet 500 printer and did not get the installation disk. I have windows 98 second edition, and installed the printer through windows 98. I can get the printer to respond by going to a dos prompt and typing dir>prn, however I can't get the printer to perform a test page. I get a printer time-out error. Any suggestions on how to get my printer to work?

I have a HP Desktop 500 and I don't have the disk. So it will not install it. What do I do?

Go to www.driverguide.com and you will be able to download a driver for for dj500. Use series 6. I had the same problem not having a disk.