HP Universal Print Driver Alternative
Well, this was an annoying issue. I pushed out TCP/IP printers using group policy and pointed them to printers on a print server to pull the drivers and settings. This worked awesome, except for the 45 seconds per printer overhead. I narrowed it down to the universal print driver, by changing the drivers to Generic Text Only. I was going to use the print drivers that came with windows, except for the wonderful problem of the issues between 32bit, 64bit, Windows 7 and XP driver names. If you look closely, you will see that they are different when it comes to the PCL version. Some are PCL6 others are PCL 6 (notice the space) and vice versa. So. Now what? Just for kicks, I tried adding the drivers from a 32-bit and 64-bit windows XP/2003 system. It worked! Hopefully it will help some others out there.
All drivers below, unless otherwise noted, were pulled directly from HP's support website. I also put all drivers in isolated mode. I don't want some rogue driver crashing my spooler for the entire place. That would be really bad.
Here's a list of drivers I have tested and that worked:
| Driver | Version |
|---|---|
| HP CM8050 MFP with Edgeline PCL 5c | 61.73.43.0 |
| HP Color LaserJet 3800 PCL 5c | 61.71.661.41 |
| HP Color LaserJet CP3525 PCL 6 | 61.82.61.41 |
| HP LaserJet 2300 Series PCL 5e | 61.63.461.42 |
| HP LaserJet 2430 PS | 61.74.561.43 |
| HP LaserJet 4 (Pulled from a 2003/xp system) | 5.2.3790.3959 |
| HP LaserJet 9040 mfp PCL 6 | 61.71.661.41 |
| HP LaserJet M3035 MFP PCL 5 | 61.82.61.41 |
| HP LaserJet M5035 MFP PCL 5 | 61.82.61.41 |
| HP LaserJet P3005 PCL 5e | 61.74.561.43 |
| HP LaserJet P4010_P4510 Series PCL 6 | 61.82.72.21 |
Here's a list of drivers that keep crashing my print spooler:
| Driver | Version | Work around |
|---|---|---|
| HP LaserJet P2035N | 2.0.0.60101 | Use the HP LaserJet 4 |
| HP LaserJet P2035 | 2.0.0.60101 | Use the HP LaserJet 4 |