Vista - HP Officejet D155xi and Vista

Hi,

I have an OfficeJet D155xi with duplex facility and lower tray. This has been a brilliant all-in-one and my current setup has it connected (via JetDirect interface supplied) to my SBS2003 server and shared on my network.

When all my client pcs were XP, I had no problem with this and was happily using print, scanning and fax via the HP drivers that came with the printer.

Two of my client laptop pcs had motherboard faults so I replaced them with new ones which had Vista on them (one was home premium and the other Ultimate). I have had nothing but trouble since then with printing, no scanning and I have now abandoned faxing.

Connectivity - initially I simply the Vista machines to the nework and added a network attached printer (in the form of \\server\share name). This resulted in me being able to print but I had no advanced features and no option to do duplex printing despite having a XP machine side by side connected in exactly the same way and working perfectly OK. Whats more, if I right click on the printer and select properties/Printing Preferences, a window opens and imediately closes. Result its pointless trying to print to this networked shared printer.
I then setup a new printer but this time did it through a TCPIP connection to the JetDirect interface, bypassing the server. That worked and gave me more options on the printer properties dialog but....

Duplex Printing - using the "out-of-the-box" driver in Vsita installs ok and recognises the lower tray and the fact that the duplex unit is installed but it only offers the do duplex manually. I eventually found the advanced setting that cured that one but duplex printing still failed with a "conflict" between that and the media type (???). Many posts else where here brough up the name of BobH who emailed me a patch which has now cured that problem. Thank you Bob.

Scanning - No chance unless the printer is USB connected. Don't even start me on the "Scan To" button....

Fax - given up. Can't even get it to work throught the SBS Fax share, just keeps reporting that it can't connect.

I agree with a lot of the posts here that the quality of the printer drivers in Vista, especially for slightly older printers, are not very good at all and am very surprised that HP don't apepar to care about it - there has been enough time since Vista was released to fix this problem. These printers were expensive units when new and are very good printers - hence why they last so long, but in todays world, you can't just throw them away and buy new ones just for the sake of someone at HP taking a bit of time and looking after existing customers rather than only focusing on "new" customers. It will only result in the "new" customers looking for a "new" printer supplier who actually cares about them.


Cheers