Laserjet 1300 Driver for Win7

[Ron M]

I have an HP Laserjet 1300 printer that I have had for many years. It has worked so far with every version of Windows and Microsoft Office that I have had - Windows 98, XP and maybe even some before that. About a year ago, I acquired a new machine with Win 7 64 bit and Office 2007. The printer still works and prints properly, the only problem is that I can only print one page at a time from Word, actually I should say only one copy at a time of a given document. It will print multi-page documents okay, but it will only print one copy regardless of how many copies are specified in the print panel. I then have to go back into the print function and print a second copy and repeat this for every copy that I want. I have tried following the directions on the HP site, but I do not seem to be able to find a driver that will work with my printer and Office 2007 under Win 7 - 64 bits. I am hoping that someone will have had a similar problem and maybe solved it, I mean I suppose if push comes to shove, then I would have to go and buy a new printer that has a proper driver for Office 2007 and Win 7 (64 bit). I have tried downloading and installing HP's Universal drivers for PCL 5 and PCL 6 printers, but this got me nowhere except to printer errors, i.e., I could not print through these drivers to my printer - they would not print a test page during the installation, for example.

Any help, insight, etc. that anyone would care to offer will be graciously appreciated. Thanks.

Ron M

P.S. Mods, not sure if this is the right place for this posting, if not please move it to the correct one. Thanks.

[JoeP517]

I too have had terrible luck with the HP universal driver. I gave up on it. Unfortunately since HP does not offer a device specific Windows 7 driver you are stuck with the basic driver supplied with Windows 7. I'm suprised you can't specify more than one copy to be printed. Have you checked the HP support site?

Joe

[Doc Brown]

I just tested the 1300 driver and it works fine. I was able to print multiple copies. You didn't say exactly what driver you are trying to use. I assume that its the HP LaserJet 1300 PCL5. If not, open the printer properties and select a new driver, but instead of going through the list, click the Windows Update button. That doesn't install patches, it only updates to the latest set of Windows native print drivers. Then select the 1300 PCL 5. Select "Install New Driver" if prompted. If that still doesn't work, delete the printer device object and recreate it. One of the few flaws I've found in 7 is that if a printer driver is behaving poorly, simply replacing the driver does not always work. I usually end up deleting the printer object.

As Joe said, the HP Universal print driver is just garbage. We have a lot of older printers at work and when we went to Windows 7, we found out pretty quickly how bad the Universal driver is. It appears from the new printers we've recently purchased that they are moving to this model for their drivers.

[Ron M]

Guys, thanks for your replies, they are appreciated. My response, as follows...

I am using the HP Laserjet 1300 PCL5 driver - I did away with all the "Universal" drivers they were trying to tell me to use. I even went so far as to unplug the current printer and remove it from my listing of printers and devices, then I replugged it in and Win 7 went out, reinstalled the device and found a driver for it and installed the driver and it still will only print one copy, even though more than one copy is specified in the printer dialog box. I can specify more than one copy to be printed, it is just that only one copy is ever printed regardless of how many are specified.

Joe, I have checked what I thought was the HP support site, but I don't seem to be able to find a driver for the 1300 - the only ones I seem to be able to find are those "useless" universal drivers and even the PCL5 one does not seem to work - maybe I don't have it configured properly, but then that is something way beyond my techie knowledge. (Maybe I am not going to the right site??)

Chuck, just to make sure I am doing this right, I click on the Windows 7 <start> ball, then on devices and printers and select the HP1300 PCL 5 device and then right click on it and select <Printer Properties> from the drop down menu (as opposed to just <Properties>), then what should I look for to ensure that I have the correct driver. I found the "Advanced" display on the dialog box and it says I have the "hp LaserJet 1300 PCL 5" driver installed, when I click on "New Driver" I get panel that says "Welcome to the Add Printer Driver Wizard" - "To continue, click Next"...on doing so, I get "Printer Driver Selection" Panel from which I can choose HP on the left-side display and "hp LaserJet 1300 PCL 5" from the right-side panel. If I click on <Windows Update> then the entire bottom of the new panel goes grey and then I am eventually returned to the "Printer Driver Selection" Panel where I can do this "Selection" thing all over again...After doing this two or three times, I click on <Next> and get a Panel that says "Completing the Add Printer Driver Wizard, etc..."You are about to add the following drivers: hp LaserJet 1300 PCL 5, x64 Type 3 - User Mode"...when I click <Finish> then I am back to <...PCL 5 Properties> Panel and when I click <OK>, it goes away. When I open a WORD 2007 document and try and print 3 copies, as specified in the printer dialog box, it only prints one copy and then the printer stops. There is nothing to indicate that there are further copies to be printed. It shows the status as "0 documents in the queue" and "Printer ready". So I guess my question is "where to go from here?" - I don't want to buy a new printer unless I have to. Just so you know, I have a Canon i9900 dot matrix printer and it is quite capable of printing multiple copies of the same document as specified in the printer dialog box - go figure? I really don't want to have to go to this one as the inks are very expensive and it is was acquired primarily for printing digital images to support my photography hobby.

Regards,

Ron M