quicken 2009

Yes, a few years old.

I do not jump on the "Windows software should be replaced just because it is only a few years old" bandwagon that you so obviously enjoy riding upon.

Maybe that's why Microsoft would not give me the "Microsoft MVP" moniker for my newsgroup signatures.

Hi John,

The printer I mention is an all-in-one, model Photosmart 2610, which uses the photosmart 2600-series driver. It was briefly installed via USB and seemed to work fine. Once my friends got a wireless router, I reinstalled the printer via TCP/IP. The printer and fax printer would both work fine for a few days, after which all printing would stop. When I checked the printers folder in control panel, sure enough, both printers had disappeared, leaving MS's XPS printer as the default. Of course, the missing (HP) printer's IP address still responded to all pings. My suspicion is that something in Vista and/or HP's windows network driver was dying within a few days, causing the Windows printers to disappear. BTW, I'd configured the router to always assign the printer's MAC address the same IP address, and I'd configured the printer to always print even if the IP address had changed. (It never did change btw.) I also tried uninstalling the entire driver/software package and just installed the printer driver, but the printer again disappeared within a few days.

HP's latest Vista driver for this series of printer is dated 03/2007, version 080.001.237.000.

My friends were quickly tiring of my troubleshooting and only being able to print for a few days before printing would fail again. So... I started looking at replacement HP printer-only devices. I liked the look of the DeskJet 6940, only to find it uses the same old driver as the Photosmart 2610! Same again with the wired/wireless DeskJet 6988.

I did much searching on the Internet and have found many, many complaints from users (32-bit Vista SP1, btw) regarding the same problem with literally, no solution other than to install the network printer via USB. HP claims no knowledge of such a problem.

I like the quality and longevity of HP printers, but when they have a driver problem, it typically takes them a-g-e-s to fix it.

My own printer is an HP DeskJet 5940, which is not a network printer. I previously had it shared from my WinXP Pro SP2/3 desktop machine, but then I added a D-Link NAS to my network. As the NAS has a print server built-in, I switched to that. The HP driver for my printer series is also dated 03/2007, but a different version, 080.001.252.000. My 5940 generally works fine with Vista (32-bit HP SP1) over my wireless network, though periodically printing fails but works again after rebooting my Vista laptop. (Printing *always* works from my XP machines.) I have not investigated the network hardware in either HP's printers nor my NAS, but I'm assuming the difference in driver is what makes my setup work and my friends' not. Incidentally, their computer is a new Dell 1525, 3GB RAM with fast Duo Core2 CPU and large hard disk. I opened the box when the computer arrived, and I proceeded to install SP1, antivirus, antispyware software, etc. before I connected the machine to the network (behind my router, of course). Further, my friends don't run Quicken.

Anyway, I'm sorry this turned into a tome but hope it helps.

Regards,

Margaret

Well they're not updating their network printer drivers, from what I can see. When I looked up your printer to see what drivers were available, it says it can't find that device. Anyway, I'll assume it's not a network printer. My finding thus far is that USB printers work fine with Vista. It's the network printers that have the problem (and old drivers).

Margaret

Sorry, mistyped, the printer is a LaserJet 3055.

It is definitely a network printer, with a wired to my LAN, and connected to an XP machine via wired LAN, and to a Vista laptop via wireless LAN. Has worked flawlessly for over 10 days now.

But my daughter had a problem similar to what you describe. She has a wireless network connected to an XP laptop and a Vista laptop, with an HP inkjet connected via USB to a "printserver" wired to the LAN. She was always having problems with printing not working on the Vista laptop. Last weekend she apparently found a cure, which has now worked for 7 days or so!

She noticed that when installing the printer from the drivers which Vista finds (i.e., not drivers on a CD or downloaded from HP), that there were two sets of drivers, one listed under HP Printers, and one listed under Hewlett-Packard Printers. One worked, the other did not!

I suspected that one set of drivers came with Vista, the working set, and the other set of drivers were installed from the printer CD when she first tried installing the printer.

Bottom line is you need to find a set of Vista specific drivers, and there may be several sets of drivers for a given printer installed on the computer.

Quite some time ago, HP began selling a "new" laserjet printer, I think it was the Laserjet IV. The device driver for that printer that was written to run on HP's proprietary hardware, and their proprietary operating system ... had bugs. The good thing was they couldn't point the finger at anyone else ... but they still took a while getting it fixed.

What is it they say: the first step is admitting you have a problem.

No need to apologize; it's good info.

Some of the posts I read about folks having HP printer problems with Quicken under Vista, said they worked around the problem by using the HP 990c printer driver.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.

Hi, bjn.

No. That's not the reason. The MVP Award is given for helping others, not for general comments or criticism - or even for expertise.

While most MVPs (myself excluded) are experts in computers, the award is given because they have devoted many hours a year to HELPING users with computer problems. Even the most-expert of all will not receive the award if he/she does not HELP others in some way, such as in newsgroups. Microsoft, other MVPs and other computer users can nominate a person for an MVP Award. The nominee will usually have been a frequent contributor to newsgroups for at least several months, probably years. His/her posts will have been consistently HELPFUL to the users. Expertise is very useful, but the willingness and ability to provide responses that will help the user to solve the problem is the most important characteristic of an MVP.

When I search this Quicken newsgroup for posts by "bjn", I get about a half-dozen hits before this thread, going back to 5/17/08. So far as I can see, NONE of them were actually helpful to anyone with a problem.

For an official description of the Microsoft MVP program, see:

33 Note especially the phrases, "for voluntarily sharing" and "a willingness to help others".

Very few of us ever asked for the MVP Award. It usually came "out of the blue" while we were busily engaged in helping, with no thought of recognition or reward. It's just what we do. It's just who we are.

RC

Do you know that? It says it runs on XP and *most* software that runs on XP will run on Win2k.

I'd give it a try...

bjn wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

There is designed for and there is designed for. One works using "normal" interfaces, the other goes deep and works with (un)docmented "hooks" into the OS. The latter may often be faster or more efficient, but when the OS is redesigned, as in the W2000 to Vista transition. Note that Vista is muc more like XP, while W2000 was much more like NT (if I'm not mistaken).

Therein may be lots of the problems.

Han wrote in news:Xns9B0C701E6D21Eikkezelf@216.151.153.14:

Sorry for the typos. Corrections: There is designed for and there is designed for. One works using "normal" interfaces, the other goes deep and works with (un)docmented "hooks" into the OS. The latter may often be faster or more efficient, but when the OS is redesigned, as in the W2000 to Vista transition, the hooks disappear, and the software driver doesn't work anymore. Note that Vista is much more like XP, while W2000 was much more like NT (if I'm not mistaken).

Therein may be lots of the problems with HP's drivers.

OK, I see that your printer's latest Vista drivers are dated June 2007, three months newer than those of the "problem" inkjets I mentioned earlier.

Would you please elaborate on your daughter's fix and specific hardware? This info could be very helpful to me and others.

Vista does not find any native drivers for the PhotoSmart 2600 series. I downloaded the latest Vista driver package from HP's web site. While some printers offer a simple driver download as well as a complete software package, only the complete package is available for this printer series. A custom install, however, did let me install just the printer driver to test my theory that perhaps the FAX driver/software was killing off the main printer. Unfortunately my theory was proven wrong.

Agreed. However, HP claims that the latest drivers on their site have no problems and are the only ones available for 32-bit Vista. And yes, I installed SP1 as well additional Windows updates (and created a disk image) prior to installing the printer, so I was able to revert to a "pristine" system prior to each test I performed.

I appreciate your advice, but unfortunately I've been through all this

-- with no solution apparent. Users in several forums are complaining about the same problem, so I know we're not alone in this. Further, having spent 20 years in computer networking/security, I have seen this scenario play out before with other, then new OSes. Time is $$, and if my friends can spend a few bucks and get a wireless Lexmark that I can make work on their LAN, we'll go that route, despite the fact that I don't particularly think much of Lexmark printers.

I'm not bashing HP by any means. Frankly I think they make the best printers out there. It's just that this is not the first time I've had to set aside an otherwise fine printer because HP couldn't get their drivers right in a timely manner. (And I'm not saying other manufacturer's don't have the same issues.)

Regards,

Margaret

Margaret and John:

Just to add some info about HP network printing under Vista Ultimate 32-bit and 64-bit (both pre-SP1 and post-SP1) I have an HP LJ 1320nw wireless and HP CLJ 2840 wired printers on my network.

The 2840 works without any glitches (except that HP Director doesn't work under Vista 64-bit)

Every few weeks I need to remove and re-install the 1320nw drivers to be able to print.

60 second procedure, if that. That's both on my Vista Ultimate 64-bit desktop, and numerous Vista Ultimate 32-bit laptops.

XP Pro has no problems on SP2 and SP3.

Bob

Is that to be able to print at all? Or just to be able to print in Quicken.

The problem I was looking into when I asked the question of Margret was Quicken users reporting that they could print in Vista with every other application except Quicken.

[I know that such statements are not proof that the printing problem is Quicken's - just that it might be. But I do think that if an application can't print using one printer driver, and a different driver is installed for that printer, and the application can print ... I believe that is close to proof that the driver was the cause of the problem.]

I'm interested in concrete evidence that printer drivers are causing problems for Quicken under Vista, that are not "apparent" in other applications.

Thanks for the input.

John:

I also have problems with MS Word when the network printing glitch strikes, so it is not isolated to Quicken. Not a big deal once I figured out that an un-install of the HP LJ 1320nw wireless printer, and immediate re-install, fixes the problem.

Bob

Thanks.

On my Dell Vista machine I just replaced an HP OfficeJet 7400xi with a Lexmark X5495.

I had no problems printing from Quicken 2008 H&B on the OfficeJet using the generic Vista drivers. I like the HP printers, but not the bloated and outdated software that comes with them.

When I uninstalled the HP and installed the Lexmark printing worked perfectly from all applications except Quicken, which was completely unable to communicate with the Lexmark. The problem apparently wasn't in the drivers but in the Quicken\Config\wpr.dat file. When I renamed this file wpr.old everything worked fine. Wpr.dat is one of the Quicken files that is relocated from a system folder to the user's Documents area by Vista Virtualization, but I have no idea whether or not that fact is relevant.

With respect to Bob's having to reinstall his HP printer drivers every few weeks, I'm not convinced that the problem is with the drivers. I've seen a similar problem with the drivers for my Dell speakers. I've also seen a lot of others weird problems that make me think the Windows registry under Vista is highly susceptible to corruption. Since parts of the registry are also subject to Virtualization I'm getting very suspicious of this Vista hack. However, I have no proof, nor do I have the technical expertise to investigate further.

Jerry

P.S. Can anyone recommend a good *and safe* registry cleaner for Vista?

Interesting. I knew that wpr.dat could get "corrupted" (which could just be generic speak for inaccurate). I can't recall if any of the others having Quicken Vista printing problems ever mentioned trying to rename wpr.dat.

Thanks for the feedback.

I think most of the other folks with Quicken printing problems, noticed them immediately upon installing and running Quicken on their new Vista machines, so I'm guessing a delayed corruption won't explain all their problems. But if you're suspicions are right, that "corruption" might be the cause of some of their problems.

I'm sure there will continue to be fallout with Vista as more and more users run under it. One day, I'll probably be one of those users, so I hope the early adopters have gotten most of the bugs found/fixed by then. :)

Thanks.

Vista or no Vista, wpr.dat is a good file to know about for people who are having problems printing from Quicken but not from any other applications. Printer drivers are not application-specific but wpr.dat is used only by Quicken (and perhaps other Intuit products). Duh!

My problem may have been wpr.dat corruption or by more general corruption that affected only the way Quicken interfaces with a printer using information from wpr.dat. It may even be a Quicken program bug that failed to adjust wpr.dat for the fact that I switched from a network printer (the HP) to a USB printer (the Lexmark). Perhaps the problem is deeper in Vista when you switch between network and USB printers or have both types present on the same system.

Jerry

"Jerry Boyle" wrote in news:OGYuk.23067$Mh5.15669 @bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

I am using Registry First Aid Platinum 6.0.0 from Rosecity Software in admin mode. So far no problems, only good things.

Vista home basic

Thanks for this info, Bob. Unfortunately my friends' printer (HP 2610) works fine for 3-4 days max then simply disappears along with all printing capability. My friends are simply not computer-savvy enough to remove and reinstall/reconfigure drivers at all, let alone every few days. I just heard today that they got the Lexmark wireless printer but are going on vacation for a few days. Thus, I won't be able to revert to my pre-printer image of their machine and test the Lexmark for a week or so. Will post back when I have more info.

John, when printing dies on my Vista32 SP1 laptop, it's not just Quicken that can't print. It's Thunderbird, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Word, etc. My printer icon doesn't disappear, however. The PC goes through the motions of printing, but no pages emerge from the printer. Fortunately a system restart restores printing to all apps. I am unfamiliar with the wpr.dat file but will stash this info away for future reference. Thx!

Regards,

Margaret