Resolved No Printing

We bought my wife an HP and had them load 64-bit Win 7 Home Premium. The box has been back to HP, diagnosed in other ways by HP, but after a year, it still won't print!
Event Viewer says it is not loading the Print Spooler, and diagnostics (where was HP on this?) says it needs DCOM and HTTP to be loaded in services too.
Problem is I can find DCOM in Services, but not HTTP. And the machine won't load SECPOL.MSC. Also, I cannot figure out how to bring in the HTTP services which seems to be the key to getting her PC to print.
Is this a problem with the 64-bit versions of Win 7? Or is this just a bad PC from HP?
I've thought of going to their rescue partition and simply rebuilding/reloading the OS from scratch. I've actually also thought of retro-fitting the system with XP Pro, since I feel it's better than Vista or Win 7.
Can anyone make a suggestion on how to get the print capability going? Another clue may be that the Gadget part of the screen is not available either.
Just a badly loaded OS or a bad PC?
Thanks everyone, for any suggestions you can make to get this thing working. Otherwise, it's a great PC <BG>! 6 GB RAM, big HD ... but key things simply don't work.
-a.

 

Printer Makdes and Models

They're all HP printers, and one is even directly connected via old-fashioned Parallel Port. That one is a Laser Jet 4L; others are as new as a couple of months ago, an HP Officejet 6500 E710a - scan or fax or print, etc. - an HP Color Laser 2605n, and an HP 2550 Color BusinessJet printer.

Yes, I am partial to HP stuff, only because - until this strange bird - their stuff usually works so well and lasts a long time.

Haven't needed to deal with their suddenly second-rate off-shore call-in center, which is a waste of their money - not until this problem - and our time and money. Those folks follow scripts, don't have imagination or their own ideas on how to diagnose, let alone fix things, and are definitely encouraged not to use non-linear logic!

I am even partial to HP or Compaq at my clients' sites, be they Mom and Pop, or Panasonic Headquarters, etc.

Strange Problem no matter which printer or Win Version - this one is 7 and yes, the 6500 Officejet does have Win 7 drivers, as do most of the others.

No other desktop or laptop or even my iPad, gives me problems printing. Please let me know if you need more info ...

And, thanks very much, all!

-a.

 

They have Win 7 drivers, but are they Win7 64 bit drivers, they are not the same.
hawk22

 

Sorry folks, I guess I neglected to mention this is a Win 7 64-bit Home Premium installation.

Now that you know it is 64-bit, does that make a difference?

The issue is not drivers, but the lack of Print Spooler in services, due to the lack of its supporting services, like DCOM and HTTP, neither of which can I load into services.

The dependencies require both of them before print spooler can be loaded as a service, and DCOM requires HTTP before it can be loaded, and I cannot find nor load HTTP.

The head bone connected to the neck bone, the neck bone ...Thanks, once more,

-a.

 

So, this is not a symptom related to Win 7 64-bit, just a faulty load of Win 7 itself?

This HP comes with the usual hidden partition from which a person can reload Windows, in this case 64-bit version 7. I can only hope that the files there are good for this, and will not perpetuate the problem. If it does, I will have to take her machine back to Windows XP Pro. Honestly, I think it is a better version of Windows anyway.
I haven't had a chance to look at Win 8 yet (in beta) so I don't know whether it is worth waiting, or loading the beta on her machine.
It's been way too long for me to try to load the beta in addition to the full load of Home Premium of 64-bit 7. And she's got Office 2010 on the HP as well, so I would have to find and reload that too.
HP presented us with a real cluster ---- on this machine, and they are useless to resolve it, having sent it back once already, and having had to deal with their off-shore people for over-the-phone diagnostics.
What a shame, as HP / Compaq has always - to me - been synonymous with good hardware and PCs.
Not so much here on this one.
Thanks all,
-a.

 

Before I would go back to XP, I would try Win 7 in 32 not 64. To me, & is better than XP. That is just my thinking. Win 7 will be supported way past the life of XP.

 

MrBill is NOT going to be mean to me!

MrBill - your response is right on the money. I do have the most experience - personal and at client sites - with XP Pro, but have worked with Vista and 7 a lot. Those last two are almost identical, as Win 7 is a cosmetic change for Vista. Kind of a Microsoft version of a face lift.

I admit that after all the years I've spent in systems, the 32-bit/64-bit thing does give me pause. I was not certain whether, after being sent out by HP as a 64-bit version to Win 7 Home Premium, I could retrofit it to 32-bit Win 7 Home Premium. I do have an install DVD available here, licensed and all - legal - and can use it to rebuild that HP. After all the years of beta testing - since 1991 - I found at my age, I'm too old for this s#it! It is going to take moving and protecting all of her documents and photos, while I then wipe out and rebuild the system to a 32-bit version of Win 7.

I can write it all out to a series of DVD-Rs or RWs. But it is simply so much work to do ... at least, she will be out of town while I do it and will hopefully return to a working machine.

I am amazed that there is not an easier fix to get the components in that are missing, and simply get printing working.

The rebuild starts tomorrow - Wednesday - and will take way too much time.

Thanks to all for your suggestions and advice. I will try to report back on how it goes or went.

Cheers!
-a.

 

Hi Arie,

I also question why those default services are not available, and question why I have to reinstall all of Windows - whether as 64-bit again, or back it down to 32-bit - just to make that work. It seems like overkill.

Do you have any suggestions as to why this is happening? Would you like remote access to this system to look at it from the inside, so to speak? I would be happy to arrange such access at your convenience. It would have to take place either late at night for you, since you're at least 5 hours ahead of us, or possibly in the day time, depending upon if I can clear my schedule.

As I mentioned in my posting to all, my wife leaves today - I am taking her to the airport later - and won't return until Sunday or Monday. So there is going to be a block of time during which I will rebuild, if necessary.

I would much prefer to simply install what is necessary and configure it to work right, than to completely wipe out and rebuild.

Do you have any suggestions on how to make it work without major surgery, so to speak <BG>?

Thank you very much, for whatever suggestions you may have.

-a.

 

Alex,

I'm not familiar with your HP printers, whether they could be configured wireless in a network, but if they could, you may want to try that to resolve this problem. My wife has a laptop with Win7/64 bit. the Brother laser printer that she had on her previous laptop was supposed to work with her W7 through USB, but it didn't. I thought by buying the latest similar model of Brother, she would have an operating printer. Of course, this didn't make any difference. She was lucky though since the newer printer has wireless capabilities and I was able to hook it up to work that way.

I borrowed a Canon printer from a friend which installed and worked as it should on USB, so whatever you are saying about lack of print spooler services and associated supporting services, may not be correct.

When any of these Brother printers were connected USB and printing was attempted, the print job was visible through the print queue box. As I can remember, if it was a small printing requirement, the printing progress bar would show for just a second. If the print job was a large file size to print such as images, it would show printing progress for a longer period of time. In either situation, nothing ever came out of the printer when told to print, which seems to mean it was going all the way through the print spooler, but it just would not make the printer progress to place the file on paper.

I'm still searching for an answer to this, short of trying to reinstall W7 or as you are thinking, going back to good old XP. I still have another USB Brother labelmaker printer which I want to make work on this W7 machine, so hopefully, there is a simple answer that can solve this problem. Brother seems to know nothing, and my computer manufacturer, Toshiba, seems to know nothing, except the usual suggestion of reinstalling the OS.

 

My printer, HP Color Laserjet 2600n, is installed as a network printer. I can send a test page from the computer and it prints correctly. When I try to print a Word document no text appears on the page that is output at the printer,. If I try to print an Outlook 2007 email I get an error stating "Printing is not available. There are no printers installed. You can select and configure a printer in Windows Control Panel "

I removed the printer from my list of printers and re-added it. After this process the printer works correctly in both Word and Outlook.

 

Hi all,
My wife was away for a week, so I protected all her important docs and other files, then did a rebuild from HP's hidden partition.

When I was done, I had everything working that had not worked before!

Seems as if HP simply ******* up their building of this PC as it works just fine now.

Thank you all for your suggestions, guidance, help and all.

This is an incredible place to get help and I will recommend it to any of my friends in the business.

Again, many thanks to all!
-a.

 

I too have had more than my share of printer problems with HP.. Brand new HP slimline tower and HP wireless 4500 all-in-one printer that continuously defaults to "xxx-fax" and must be removed and re-installed to have the HP Solution Center communicate with the printer and be able to print from Word. I think HP has a glitch that they aren't owning up to.... just sayin'

 

When I looked in Services and other Administrative functions, it was clear that Print Spooler was not there, due to the lack of DCOM and HTTP. There was no way to get these things installed, as SECPOL.MSC didn't run fron the command prompt, as it was supposed to do.

Everything I tried proved to fail untilI reinstalled Win 7 from HP'shidden partition for recovery. Once done, all things that did not work before now worked just fine.

Thanks to everybody who helped and tried to guide me to a reolution.
-a.