When my computer crashed a couple months ago,lost a bunch of old programs and one of them was my printer's...well today I decide to hook it back up and it didn't work. I went to the 'Add a Printer' option in the control panel ; nothing happened, put the cd-rom i n and it starts the setting up process, the program asks me if I want to install I click 'yes' and hell freezes over and it doesn't go anywhere with it. There's another option that lets me pick the printer from a list in the computer; well, the model is not there! It tells me about a 'port' when my printer all it has is a USB cable...I never had trouble with it before like this!!! and I just bought a new ink cartridge for it too...What should I do?

[QUOTE=Unmarried*happyWhen my computer crashed a couple months ago,lost a bunch of old programs and one of them was my printer's...well today I decide to hook it back up and it didn't work. I went to the 'Add a Printer' option in the control panel ; nothing happened, put the cd-rom i n and it starts the setting up process, the program asks me if I want to install I click 'yes' and hell freezes over and it doesn't go anywhere with it. There's another option that lets me pick the printer from a list in the computer; well, the model is not there! It tells me about a 'port' when my printer all it has is a USB cable...I never had trouble with it before like this!!! and I just bought a new ink cartridge for it too...What should I do?[/QUOTE]


well, the best thing to do would be to uninstall any of the printer software and drivers still in there, unplug the printer, then download updated software & drivers and perform a clean reinstall

what model is it? - if you can't find updated installation files on the manufacturer's website, try a clean install with the disks again - the important point is that you need to remove anything that is stuck in there NOW

I had that problem with mine... it even got to where the CD would download, and then it would say "error installing hardware, may not work properly" finally after clearing out all the inactive printer drives and 2 months of craziness later, it's working. :rolleyes:

well, the best thing to do would be to uninstall any of the printer software and drivers still in there, unplug the printer, then download updated software & drivers and perform a clean reinstall

what model is it? - if you can't find updated installation files on the manufacturer's website, try a clean install with the disks again - the important point is that you need to remove anything that is stuck in there NOW


I unistalled everything, it was like the computer never had a printer before. When I reinstalled, the cd takes me through the steps and everytime the computer just froze there and the cursor dissapeared and I had to reboot .It's an HP deskjet 3320

I unistalled everything, it was like the computer never had a printer before. When I reinstalled, the cd takes me through the steps and everytime the computer just froze there and the cursor dissapeared and I had to reboot .It's an HP deskjet 3320

two things:

go to www.hp.com and download the most current drivers/installation package, and run it, but DONT PLUG IN THE USB cable until the program asks for it http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?product=75035&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&submit.y=0&submit.x=0&lang=en&cc=us

when you plug in the cable, does Windows act like it recognizes that you just plugged something in? you could have a bad port, cable, or the printer may indeed be broken - try plug it into a different machine if you can to test if it is "seen" by it, and try to borrow a USB cable in case that is the problem.

if none of that works, I would start wondering if the printer itself is damaged in some way.