Old HP printer on Win7?

September 25, 2017 4:09 PM

I have an old H-P Deskjet 712C printer, which worked well last time I used it. It was hooked up to a WinXP computer in a room on another floor from where we need to use it. We had to start up the XP computer and send any print jobs through that, then go down and collect the output. All the other computers are Win7, and the printer won't work with them. H-P doesn't support the printer any more, so there are no drivers for it.

Is there any way to use this printer, either directly connected to one of the Win7 boxes, or connected to WiFi? It was a good printer, and I'd like my daughter to use it on the desk where she does her homework. I tried the H-P "Universal driver," but it doesn't see the 712C.

posted by Kirth Gerson to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

That printer uses HP's "Printer Performance Architecture" which, like most deceptively-named innovations, was a way of making printers cheap by moving the expensive heavy-lifting smarts out of the printer hardware & into the driver software. Think of it as the "winmodem" of printers. It was only ever used for a handful of models, and IIRC the drivers only ever supported XP.

There's a Ghostscript plugin (pnm2ppa) that supports PPA & the 712C on Linux & OSX, though I don't know if it's still current. I guess it's at least theoretically possible to get it working by setting up Ghostscript on Windows (or use an RPi or similar running Linux), but personally I'd buy a Brother or Fuji color laser rather than bothering…
posted by Pinback at 4:49 PM on September 25, 2017

Best answer: From what I can tell, Windows 7 may include a driver for the Deskjet 712c itself. To install it

• Go to Start > Devices & Printers
• Click "Add a printer"
• Choose "Add a local printer"
• Choose the port that the printer is connected to; if the computer has a parallel port built-in, LPT1 is the port you'd use, but if you're using a USB to parallel port interface, it'll be something like USB001 (check the manual that came with the USB/parallel converter).
• Click Windows Update, then choose HP as the manufacturer and "HP DeskJet 710C" for the printer (it should be close enough).
• Click Next and allow the driver installation to complete.

This driver may only work for 32-bit Windows 7, however. If you're using 64-bit Windows 7 and are technically inclined, there's a patch for the 32-bit driver here that might work for you.
posted by Aleyn at 4:58 PM on September 25, 2017

Aleyn beat me to it. That's the same link I found. Just be careful about downloading drivers and apps from non-official sites like cnet, Macupdate, etc; they've been caught multiple times bundling spyware and malware in their downloads. If you can't get it direct from the developer or Microsoft's Windows Update, I seriously recommend looking into a new printer.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 5:04 PM on September 25, 2017

Response by poster: I was able to get it to work, using a USB adapter cable and the patch in Aleyn's link. I wasted a lot of time trying to get another computer of the same model to run the thing, but could not get Windows Update to add the 710c driver. When I gave that up and went to the laptop I wanted to use, the driver was already there. I added the patch files, and it tried to print a test page, but paper-jammed. Then it wouldn't respond at all.

Multiple repetitions of deleting and adding the printer, running the troubleshooting wizard, and replacing the patch files eventually got it to respond. Now I'm waiting for ink, because it's empty/dried up.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:59 AM on September 28, 2017