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Monday, May 03, 2004

DO NOT INSTALL HP DeskJet 5150 Printer Drivers on OS X

Here's the story about how the HP DeskJet 5150 and OS X 10.3 do not get along when you install the drivers from the HP supplied install disk:
[MacInTouch Reader]
I got some interesting information from HP tech support regarding problems with a new HP DeskJet 5150 and 10.3. The user had just purchased the printer, and installed drivers off the included CD. Printer Setup Utility recognized the printer but reported drivers were not installed. We used the original installer to uninstall, then tried downloading drivers from HP. The result was the same. Upon calling HP, we were told that the DeskJet driver included with 10.3 is newer than anything you can download, and installing the older version will cause problems. The support agent said that simply uninstalling the old version would make everything work.

This proved to be incorrect. Not only did we have to uninstall the drivers we downloaded, we had to reinstall the newer ones from 10.3's Disc 2. In the packages folder was an item called something like "HP Printer Drivers". Installing it (no reboot required!) fixed everything.
I just reinstalled drivers that came on my OS X 10.3 disk, and the printer now works.

My mistake was inserting the HP Driver disk that came with the printer and following the on screen directions. I had a bad feeling about it when I did it. I was thinking that Mac OS X already had all the printer drivers installed. I wondered why I had to use the HP disk. But, as someone who enjoys following instructions, I went ahead and loaded in the HP drivers from the CD.

ERROR!

As you can see from the above post on MacInTouch, that was the wrong thing to do.

Sometimes it's frustrating that the Mac is so easy.