Anyone know how to get an HP Laserjet 3150 All-in-1 printer to work with XP 64-bit?

[freddy333]

My question is - Does anyone know of another driver (or procedure) that is known to work with this printer under 64-bit versions of Windows XP (& before any of you wise wags direct me to hp.com, they do not make a 64-bit driver for this printer, which is why I am hoping someone has another option)?

I have 1 of these HP Laserjet 3150 printers standing between me & getting my computer (which has many gigabytes worth of gen watch pictures contained within it) back into full operation. After the Windows Registry blew up (gotta love Windows )

I had to essentially start from scratch, reinstalling Windows, alot of apps & all of my rescued data. But I decided that if I have to go through the painful process of rebuilding the computer, I at least ought to end up with something better than I started out with. So I decided to upgrade from 32-bit XP to 64-bit XP & the comparison between the 2, I have to admit, is quite startling. The 64-bit version is noticeably faster & more stable than the 32-bit XP many of us are used to.

The problem is that I need to use this printer/fax/scanner daily (neither my company nor I want to replace it), but HP does not (& apparently will not) provide a 64-bit driver for it. In the past, whenever I lacked the proper printer driver, I have always been able to find/make another driver work. But I spent days searching the web, trying all sorts of fixes & drivers.......I must have tried 200+ drivers & nada. Nothing. The printer does not even yawn when XP 64 tries to communicate with it & I am tired of looking at this

So I am about 1/4 of the way through reinstalling everything & I will have to start over & reinstall 32-bit unless I can find a 64-bit solution for this printer.

Anyone?

[chronoluvvv]

sounds like you've exhausted all available avenues, man

[greg_r]

Whilst it is sometimes possible to get unsupported laser printers working under XP64, with a multifunction machine you're basically screwed as a: it doesn't support postscript, so the generic PS driver won't work and b: the scanner driver would also be broken.

Frankly, I suspect the only reason why you're finding XP 64 to be faster and more reliable is that it's a fresh install. There are far too many gotchas with it in terms of hardware/software compatibility to make it terribly viable for corporate use. I evaluated it (and Vista x64) for our own purposes some time ago (I'm a senior manager/co-administrator of a medium sized charity and run our I.T. dept), and, after some considerable effort spent trying to get certain things working, concluded that it was completely unsatisfactory. A server OS is another matter, but not enough desktop applications/drivers in common corporate use are 64-bit aware.

Sorry, I know you don't want to hear this, but I suspect that you're only going to solve this by going back to XP 32-bit

[freddy333]

Whilst it is sometimes possible to get unsupported laser printers working under XP64, with a multifunction machine you're basically screwed as a: it doesn't support postscript, so the generic PS driver won't work and b: the scanner driver would also be broken.

Frankly, I suspect the only reason why you're finding XP 64 to be faster and more reliable is that it's a fresh install. There are far too many gotchas with it in terms of hardware/software compatibility to make it terribly viable for corporate use. I evaluated it (and Vista x64) for our own purposes some time ago (I'm a senior manager/co-administrator of a medium sized charity and run our I.T. dept), and, after some considerable effort spent trying to get certain things working, concluded that it was completely unsatisfactory. A server OS is another matter, but not enough desktop applications/drivers in common corporate use are 64-bit aware.

Sorry, I know you don't want to hear this, but I suspect that you're only going to solve this by going back to XP 32-bit

Thanks, Greg. You know, I think you may have just convinced me to go back to 32-bit.

If the printer was the only issue (I have an even older Canon inkjet running on the machine, which has the appropriate 64-bit drivers (I think you can guess who will be getting all of our future printer sales)), I could suffer having to transfer the occasional document to the server or another 32-bit workstation for printing. But I have also run into a couple of important apps (beginning with my firewall/security program & there are no doubt others that I have yet to install) that are not 64-bit compatible, which forced me to go with less than optimal alternate choices. It just would have made this whole frustrating ordeal a bit more palatable knowing that something positive came out of all this. I guess I should just be happy that I did not lose any of my data (especially the several gigs worth of gen Rolex pictures archived on my hard drives).

It sure would be nice to be able to lose Windows altogether & run Unix on everything. But I just have too many Windows apps that do not have functional/performance/ease-of-use equivalents in the *nix world to make that viable now.

[Shundi]

You could do a half-assed reinstall using VM Ware to run a virtual XP 32 bit environment but... that's kind of overkill...I'd say just go back to 32

[Royal Oak]

Yup you're headed back to 32 bit land.

I have a Lenovo T61P 64 bit that I'm using as my main machine these days. I wanted to make use of all the memory for virtual machines so that means 64 bit host. I settled on 2003 server since it is basically XP 64. almost everything works except the damn sound. No go.

When you need a low level driver like that someones gotta compile it specifically. If they don't your're out of luck. Give me the code, I'll compile it for 64 bit xp!

[freddy333]

You could do a half-assed reinstall using VM Ware to run a virtual XP 32 bit environment but... that's kind of overkill...I'd say just go back to 32

Yeah, I thought of that (as well as a dual-boot system), but I am trying to keep the new install as simple as possible (from a daily usage point of view) & running multiple OSs does not really simply things. I am in the process of reinstalling XP 32-bit now, so I should have the basic system running by tomorrow. Hopefully, it will not take more than a week or so to get all of my old apps & data installed/configured as they were prior to the Registry crash.

Thanks everyone for your input.

[tomhorn]

HP used to have a "universal" print driver. Have you tried that one? Wouldn't get you scanning and faxing, but at least you could print.

[freddy333]

HP used to have a "universal" print driver. Have you tried that one? Wouldn't get you scanning and faxing, but at least you could print.

3 universal drivers actually - PCL5, PCL6 & Postscript & I tried them all (these were among the 200 or so I tried before posting this thread). For hours!!!!!!! Sadly, none worked.

I'm currently back in the 32-bit world & trying to restore the fragments of my computer's broken life back together again.