Solving HP Photosmart C7180 All-In-One Driver Install Problems

1:19am, 18 March 2007

Here's one of many reasons that I love my Mac, and have grown to dislike Windows.

I got myself a new printer, an HP Photosmart C7180 All-In-One printer. Fantastic device - it's not only a printer, it's also a scanner, fax machine and photocopier, and it can do all those things without a computer (eg you can scan files onto a memory card). It also has wireless networking, so the printer can be in a different room to the computer.

The Mac install was a breeze. I just followed the instructions, ran the CD install, and it all just worked - even the wireless networking. It's working great.

Windows Driver Install Nightmare

But the Windows install was a nightmare. I've spent 5 hours today and several hours on other days trying to get it to work. Here's what happened:

The driver installation on the CD kept hanging, so I downloaded the latest drivers from HP's website.
The barebones drivers (a 54MB download!) were also hanging - at Step 3, the point where the install says "Installing Additional Software", with the progress bar at about 9%.
Download the full 300MB drivers from HP's website, since it contains all the additional software. But the HP C7180 driver install kept hanging in the same place. Still trying to "Install Additional Software".
Realized that I hadn't turned off my anti-virus. Did that and ran the installer again, but had exactly the same result.
Tried switching to my Administrator account and attempted a re-install. Still hanging in the same place.
Tried to install it in Windows Safe Mode. This time, the installer got nearly all the way through... until it complained that the Print Spooler service hasn't started. I tried starting it manually from the Windows Administrative Tools (in the Control Panel), but it gave me this bizarre error: "Error 1077: No attempts to start the service have been made since the last boot." Uhh, what?
About this time, realized I'd lost 2GB of drive space. Each time I ran the driver installer, it wasn't deleting its temporary files. I had to delete them manually from the hidden folder: C:\Documents And Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp\
Tried turning off my firewall while installing the drivers. Finally, this got past the "Installing Additional Software" message! My firewall gave no warning notices, and the HP driver install gave no indication it was trying to connect to the internet (or that it was failing to do so).
Finally got through to the point where it tries to find my printer on the wireless network. It failed. It gave me the option to enter the printer's MAC network address, its built-in hostname, or its dedicated IP address. All of these failed.
I even tried pinging the printer via its IP address, just to check it was on the network and I could reach it. That all worked fine, it's just the driver install that wouldn't see the printer.
Tried plugging in a network cable to see if wired networking would at least work. That didn't work either.
I even used the printer's "Print Network Configuration Page" option (in the Setup -> Network -> View Network Settings menu on the printer), to confirm that I was typing the right settings into the driver install program. I was.
Finally gave up.

Apple and Bonjour to the Rescue

So maybe I just got unlucky, and had a dodgy Windows configuration, right? That doesn't prove that Apple Macs are better, does it? Actually, it does...

Suddenly remembered that Apple has some "zero configuration" software for setting up printers called Bonjour. Bonjour is built-in to the Mac, but you can also download a version of Bonjour for Windows.
Installed Bonjour on my computer, then double-clicked the "Bonjour Printer Wizard" icon that it put on my desktop. Instantly it found my printer. (If this doesn't work for you, check your computer's firewall, and make sure port 5353 is open. That's the port that Bonjour uses. Then try again.)
Next, it asked me to select a printer driver. My specific printer wasn't on the list, but I clicked the "Have Disk" button, and pointed it to one of the many hp_webrelease folders in my Temp directory, from all my previous failed installs. I chose the file "hpaioa.inf".
Within 3 minutes, my printer drivers were installed and I'd printed my first page - wirelessly - from Windows.

So there you have it. I was able to resolve my Windows problems by downloading drivers written by Apple. Never thought I'd see that happen!