Thinkpads Forum

I was hoping any readers more knowledgable than I (just about every reader here, I expect) might have some guidance they could offer.

I am using a T43. Last year, all merry hell broke lose with what I can only assume was a corrupt donwload via System Update - no other new software or downloads were made at the time.

I did a wipe (not quite complete, I must presume) but re-loaded my OS (XP SP2) and all applications and data. But I have been left with one, residual problem which, despite all endeavours, I cannot find a way of resolving.

The problem is that I am using an HP printer. The printer drivers were working fine before the problem time but, ever since, I can neither remove nor reinstall the drivers. The consequence is I have a printer which is unusable with the T43. (The printer and drivers are fine, and I have tested them on a completely different machine).

I can only assume I have some residual driver or other file in my registry, which has the effect of blocking an uninstal or re-install.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions over how I might purge the machine of any residual files, so I can see whether it is then possible to perform a fresh install ? To the best of my knowledge, the printer drivers in question are the only HP drivers which have ever been loaded onto the machine.

Trying the add or remove function in Windows does not work. The program is shown on the list but attempting the remove function produces a message telling me that setup has experienced a program error.

Any guidance would be much gratefully appreciated. Thanks.

Try going to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager. Go to the printer or unknown device and update the driver. Tell the wizard where your printer driver is located on your hard disk. It is possible that you may have to reinstall the printer drivers from your installation disk if they have been deleted. You may have to reboot for changes to take effect. If this does not work, then read below...

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I have had the same thing happen to me with an Epson printer once. I manually searched the Registry and deleted all keys referencing the printer. This worked for me, but it does carry some risk. You may delete keys that reference other HP products or remove Windows built-in printer drivers - or you may damage your registry perhaps where you can't even boot up. If you want to try this, go to Start > Run > and type regedit in the Open box and click OK. Once in regedit, click on Edit > Find, and type your search string in the text box. Click on F3 to find the next instance of your search string. View each key it stops on, and try to determine if that is something that you want to delete or not. To delete you can right-click on a key or folder.

I believe a better and easier method would be to run a registry cleaner program. One of these should find the orphan keys and allow you to delete them. I have not personally tried this method for hardware drivers though.

Once done, reboot, then try and install your printer driver software again. Generally speaking the driver software has to be installed before ever plugging the printer into the computer. Do it the other way around and you run into problems.

Thanks.

I've tried the device manager route. This is no use because, bizarrely, no pirnters show up whatsoever, even those (a Canon and Adobe) which are present and which function perfectly OK.

I've alsp tried the registry cleaner program route (CCleaner) but no joy.

I have not tried the regedit approach but am prepared to give this a go. But, referring to your suggestion what might I enter for the "search string" ?

I wil take an image of my machine before trying and so I can take the risk on completely wrecking the OS. The worst that can happen is that I have to reload the image.

Any further steers would be appreciated. For what it is worth, the printer is a HP Colour LaserJet 2600n. As best I know, the drivers for the printer are the only HP drivers which have been loaded. I certainly do not not use any other HP branded products, and so feel quite relaxed about obliterating any HP drivers.

My only further thought is that, based on ths product alone, HP is another of those companies (like Lenovo) which is dedicated to a world in which the only browser is IE. I have IE6 loaded on the TP but, by choice, use Firefox.. When I very first loaded the drivers for the HP printer, there was a bit of a struggle because the default browser was not IE and the drivers were intent on looking for IE. I forget how I cured the issue at the time (whatever I did would not have been very clever) but I do wonder whether I left a trail of unwanted files which is why I am now having problems.

Thanks.

I would try searching for LaserJet 2600n or just 2600n.

I'ts actually best not to remove printers through the registry as a lot of keys rely on one another, to properly run all the on board drivers provided with windows, there are a lot of hp keys in the registry. There is a tool you can download to repair a corrupted print folder, it is part of the window server 2003 resource kit. I'll find it for you. In the meantime, in your printers folder click on file, server properties, drivers and see if you can remove the driver there..

2003 Resource Kit Tools

I have used this on a few XP machines, including my own, as some %#$%ing manufacturers can't make decent drivers and I have to test them out. Read and follow the directions carefully, create a restore point before you do this and before doing any type of major work to your PC. This will completely clean out your printers folder of all printers, corrupted or working. If you need help let me know, basically what you do is find the printer icon with the program "cleanspl.exe" click and run the program, there will be some prompts with information to remove or not remove items, choose at your descretion. This will completely clean out the printers folder.

Thanks. Deleting some files in the registry has at least now enabled the removal of the program entry showing in the add/remove list of programs. I am now left with at least one entry in the registry which I can see under USBprint in the registry but will not delete.

Having got this far, which is a lot further than all on my previous attempts, I am going to leave things for a while, make sure my other printers are not affected and then give it another go.

Thanks for your help.

I have another tool, that Kyocera created to delete printers thier reg entries and orphans, it is a powerful tool but very handy to get rid of all associated files with a print driver. It's very small, unzip it to a desigated folder, you'll see a little printer with a red X, run that, you'll see a list of your printers, select the printer from the list, select the action menu and delete, you can also remove all registry entries, and orphans and OEM files, i don't recommed removing associated OEM files.





I have uploaded it to my ftp site www.biscu.com if you want it, or anybody wants it for that matter PM me and i'll send you my password to download the tool. Or anything else there you want.

If you google this tool you'll find it, but the version I have is pretty recent, some of the older versions could reek havoc, trust me. Another thing that is great about this tool is if you click on the Registry folder it will display the EXACT reg entries associated with that printer (pic#2), so there is no guessing involved. You can see by that picture there are a lot of registry entries associated with a printer.

andrewb wrote:

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions over how I might purge the machine of any residual files, so I can see whether it is then possible to perform a fresh install ?

do a factory restore with the start up disk that you have created yourself. after the computer boots, it will ask you to insert the factory CDs. since you don't have them you just restart your computer and then reload your operating system and data onto a freshly formatted HD.
or you can get acronics and do formating in there...

matt, I think he is talking about a fresh install of the print driver

Just to report back, I tried the cleanspl tool (again) but with no joy, although the Kyocera tool seems to have done the trick. I would wonder whether the Kyocera tool is not worthy of a sticky ?

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Moved here and updated the location of the kyocera printer driver deleter tool.

The tool is available here now. Follow the instructions to the letter please. While this is a far safer alternative than trying to find all the reg keys associated with a certain driver, it will toast your printers folder if you get overzealous.