Vista - Bug in HP OfficeJet d145 in Vista RTM

I know this thread's been quiet for a while, but thought I'd just add my own experience...

I've an HP Officejet d155xi which I've been using happily with XP for a few years. I've recently bought a new laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate installed and have been extremely disappointed by the major problems using it with this printer.


o No Scanning. Okay that's half the functionality of the device gone. I understand I could do some sort of basic scanning if I connected the printer using USB, but I don't, I use the network as I want to share the device and be able to use it when connected with wireless.

o No duplex printing. The printer options have an option to specify the printer is capable of duplex printing, but enabling it doesn't seem to work. When I go to print a document I still only have the option for 'manual duplexing'.

o No paper tray selection. The printer has 2 printer trays - a standard small one (the upper one) and a larger (lower) one. I fill the large one with A4 paper and use the upper with smaller A5 or photo paper which worked well. However with Vista although I can specify which paper tray to use, the printer always uses the upper one. I've now filled the upper tray with A4 paper so I can use it, but it's another chunk of functionality lost.

o And the final nail in the coffin - I've also found the bug which prevents printing in landscape mode. It's occasionally worked on simple documents, but most of the time the printer just throws out lots of blank pages and has to be stopped with the 'Cancel' button.

It strikes me that noone can have tested the driver properly and for someone with the right skills these could be fixed.

I know things move on and don't expect everything to be perfect with Vista, but this seems a major mess-up by HP. Their web site recommends upgrading to a newer printer. Throwing the old working one away isn't very environmentally friendly though, and when I do upgrade HP won't be high on the list.

After reading your posting and others related to HP printers and Windows and
after spending more than 8 hours with HP technicians, I got the impression
that there is something "fishy" about Windows Vista and the drivers on the HP
printers. It might be even a case of false advertisement. The printers I
bought (and returned) carried the logo "Vista Certified" (new models
Photosmart C4385 and C4280) and because this logo they should work well (at
least) with Vista. But they do not ! There is a HP website that states that
the Scan Button on HP printers (the website does not specify if all the HP
printers or some)does not work because of driver incompatibility. Then, the
printers are not "Vista Certified" and we might have a case of false
advertisement to say the least ! And the HP technical support gave me an
impression they do not know what they are doing! Or that they pretend that
they do not know.They did not know about this HP website! They were trying to
help me (for hours and hours) to make the Scan button to work with Vista and
the HP website states that it does not !!!
The website is:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...ncodeUrl=true&

any thoughts ?
thank you
JP

"swlawson" wrote:

I just found something else that doesn't work with Vista and my d155Xi.

Print quality - changing it from Normal to Best or Draft. The printer loads a sheet of paper and makes some promising noises, but nothing is printed and the print job completes with nothing on the paper.

Has anyone found a fix for this? I have Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, and an HP Officejet d145. Scanning works fine. Faxing works fine. When I try to print from Office (primarily Word, but it does it in Outlook and Excel too. I rarely print from any other office app), sometimes it prints, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it prints the top half of the page, then a fuzzy line and then nothing on the bottom half. I spent the better part of a week going back and forth with HP, loaded their "latest" driver (which turns out to be the same one I already had), and trying all kinds of "troubleshooting" some of which could not possibly have had anything to do with the printer (including unplugging my speakers and USB external drive, and reseting some Internet Explorer settings). I reinstalled office, rebooted dozens of times, and finally decided that HP has no clue what's going on. I have used this printer for several years with XP, and NEVER had any problems with it. I can print test pages till I run out of paper, they proclaim that everything is fine. SOMETIMES, other programs will print (Adobe Acrobat for one), but not always. OCCASIONALLY, rebooting will cause the printer to work fine for several print jobs, then back to the "hit and miss" method. This is VERY frustrating. Is it a Vista issue (that seems likely, because I was using all the other software - Office 07, Acrobat, etc... all along... VISTA is the ONLY common factor)?

I have a HP d145 that work perfectly, via a wireless printer hub, from a
desktop running Windows XP. I have another machine running Vista and when I
try to print anything remotely complex or that includes landscape
orientation, the printer prints a fragment of the document, hesitates and
then spits out countless blank sheets until the print task is cancelled. I
have contacted HP support who provided some simple resets and which made no
difference, and then they went on to do what techies do so often which is
blame the hardware! If it was the hardware, then why does the other machine
still work normally? Also, I have noticed that black type has shadows of
other colours where previously black was black only. Vista Service Pack 1
hasn't helped either.

"swlawson" wrote:

In article <2CB9A4DF-33BB-45D6-96CE-4C487676C335@xxxxxx>, H
Allen wrote:
That sounds pretty typical of the need to realign the print heads since
even black uses colored inks on some printers. Check the Maintenance
TAB in properties.
Remove it until it's debugged by the world around us!

Realigning the heads would be the obvious thing to do. So I did, but there is
still a shadow when printing using the Vista machine, but not when using the
XP machine. Furether evidence that this is a driver problem, to my mind.

"huwyngr" wrote:

In article <06FC3AFF-9187-4E38-964D-EF3ADAB9CF03@xxxxxx>, H
Allen wrote:
This is one of the machines that uses the Out of the Box driver in
VISTA and no sign of a specific one from HP to download.

You mentioned earlier that this is network connected -- try using USB
cable ?

Also it might be worth trying the XP software/driver but installing it
using Compatibility mode and Run as Administrator -- shout if you need
directions -- but if you do this remember not to have the USB cable
connected or the network connection on and that you must remove all
traces of the AIO that may be in say the Printers Folder as well as any
HP software for it that is in Remove Programs.

What version of VISTA is it BTW?