Making HP Laserjet Printers Work In Windows Vista

Hardware, Software

I’ve been fighting against Windows Vista to get my HP Laserjet 1010 working for about a month now and finally have a working solution. You’re mileage might vary:

  1. Go to http://www.hp.com and find the driver for your printer. If a direct match isn’t available, see if there is one for the updated version of your printer (in my case, a Laserjet 1012 or a Laserjet 1015). If none of those are available, there are numerous forums that suggest using the Windows XP driver will work as expected, see how you go.
  2. Decompress the drivers you’ve downloaded to a known location on your computer.
  3. Go into Control Panel, Printers and select the Add Printer option.
  4. When the prompt comes up to select the port to connect your printer to, instinctively you would have chosen USB. Don’t ask me why, but even though the printer is connected via a USB connection, you’ll need to select the DOT4 option. I had been choosing the USB option with no success, so if you’re having trouble with your existing driver it might be worth switching it just to see if it fixes your printer problem.
  5. When you get to the vendor/printer screen, select the Have Disk option and navigate to where you decompressed the files to in point 2.
  6. Follow the rest of the wizard though.

I’m currently using the HP provided Laserjet 1012 drivers against my Laserjet 1010. After my new found knowledge of selecting the DOT4 port option, I now suspect that the Microsoft provided driver for the HP Laserjet 1010 would have worked as well.

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23 thoughts on “Making HP Laserjet Printers Work In Windows Vista”

  1. You legend, you made it work! nearly everywhere I looked on the net said it was impossible!

    Thank you!

  2. Followed the description above. I got an error message while installing the driver, but apparently it was a “false alarm” since my Vista-computers now corresponds perfectly with my Laserjets. Been trying to fix this driver-issue on and of for months. Thanks a bunch for making this page.

  3. Where can you get the 1015 driver from? It’s not on HP website even though they say there is one available. Help!

  4. I have a another solution download de UPD (universal printer driver) from HP. There are 3 options PL6 PL5 and Postscript UPD drivers.

    Try and if you have the correct one depending your installation and printer you can print now under windows vista.

  5. It works, thank a lot. But sometimes, after view papers printing, i got an error about PCM .

  6. If you accidentally left EconoMode on while using your printer on e.g. Windows XP, you will not be able to disable it on Vista (there is no such option in UPD-based driver).

    But you may reset the printer to factory settings, which will disable the EconoMode. To do this, turn on the printer and while it is powering up, press and hold the green button for few seconds until orange light is on. Then release the button. The printer will blink some more lights and after a moment it is reset. Tada!

  8. 1015 driver works perfectly for 1010. However, no need to download the driver from HP. I simply used the MS provided list of HP drivers in Vista Home Premium. DOT4 does the trick!

  9. It’s working. I have Vista Ultimate, and I used 1015 driver. And DOT4 really is a trick…

  10. Hp help = buy a new printer!
    Thanks so much! works great. I did the same as above poster and just clicked on the HP 1015 driver that was there in the provided list so no need to go to HP and so getting my 1010 laserjet was simply solved in a minute. Cheers for putting in the work!

  11. Superb, thanks. Took me hours of frustration to get this working on my last vista pc so was dreading doing it again. Then I google it and find this excellent guide, 2 mins and it’s up and running. Thanks Again
    Tim

  15. Here’s my “Catch 22” variant of this problem. While my LJ P2015d was sold as WinVista compatible, the standard install CD wouldn’t work with Vista. After a lot of trouble, I got it to work using a virtual USB port. But there’s no software to “manage” the printer. HP Easy Printer Care is supposed to do so, but will not recognize a P2015 connected directly to the computer. Somewhere I read that I would be successful if I used a DOT4 port instead of the USB port, but there’s no DOT4 port option in the list . . . that was supposed to have been installed in the CD installation that did not work. Any ideas about how I can set up the DOT4 option, perhaps using one of the obscurely labelled files on the installation CD?

  17. dot4 + 1015 driver works great but if i stop using the printer for hour or so and then go to print if prints out error message as before. once i plug it out hold down start button to refresh the printer it works again as normal. is anybody experiencing the same problem.

  18. Thank you very much. I’m a professor, not a programmer. Recently changed from a descent DELL Inspiron 6000 XP to an HP Pavilion dv7 Vista64. HP 1010 Laserjet wouldn’t be recognized. Downloaded some mystifying zipped files. Then fortunately found your advice. Thank you! It worked!

  19. It works, but extremly slow!

    On XP, my printer (LaserJet 1010) printed one page in about a second or two, and now on Vista, I have to wait about 10-15 seconds between pages are printed (it goes like this: wait 15 sec, first page printed, then wait 15 sec, second page is printed, wait 15 sec…).

    What can I do about that? I know that LaserJet 1012 (which I choose the driver for) has way less RAM memory than LaserJet 1010 (1012 2mb, 1010 8mb, or something like that).

    Does anyone has this problem? How to fix it?

  22. I know you posted this ages ago, but I’ve just received a secondhand LJ1010 and a computer running Vista (separately), so it’s great to be able to use them together – thank you so much.

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