I have a Canon Imagerunner C5180 installed on a 32 bit 2008 R2 print server - all current drivers downloaded, but I am having trouble adding that printer as a network printer on my 32 bit Win 7 Pro machines. I get the error "Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation failed with error 0x0000007e." and in the logs I am getting "The print spooler failed to load a plug-in module spool\DRIVERS\W32X86\3\hpzpnp.dll, error code 0x7e." I can get the printer to install on one machine, but if I delete the Network printer and try to re-add it right away I get the above error until I reboot my laptop. On the other machineI cannot get the printer to install at all - installing as a local printer is not an option as I am not going to be installing a local printer for every machine I roll out. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them - nothing I have found so far is working and we are not rolling out Win 7 until we get a fix.

You said that you have a Canon printer and I think that hpzpnp.dll belongs to a HP printer. If you have got a HP printer driver installed, please uninstall it and check if the error message is the same. If this does not help, I recommand to you to contact Canon Technical Support for help. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights. Microsoft Student Partner Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Security Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration

Where would Windows 7 get a HP driver from? The printer has the correct driver on the server and I have never installed a HP printer on my client machine so I'm wondering why that .dll would be coming from HP? I also don't know where I would look for that printer driver to uninstall it? Am I missing something? Is there somewhere in Win 7 that shows all my installed drivers and lets me remove whatever I want?

printmanagement.msc The printer added to your server was originally configured using an HP print driver. It contains a registry entry that points to a 32bit version of the HP driver. The Windows 7 machine gets this information from the server and happily copies it but the module will not load on 64bit since it's a 32bit binary and you hit this error. I've not seen this issue on 32bit but that could indicate the the printer points to the file but it's actually not installed on the server bing me; Alan Morris hpzpnp.dll If the printer does not need the hpzpnp entry just remove it. Or you add a new print queue and delete the old one that contains the invalid entry. Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

hpzpnp.dll is related to a HP printers the only thing I am not sure about about is whether it only installed when installing HP printers(you do not mention brand of computer/server) my understanding is that if you do not have a HP printer installed, remove hhpnznp.dll, then reinstall Canon dvr. You say you have never installed a HP printer, but I have included a link to give you some background info re. hpzpnp.dll, and on browing web http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1299045388012+28353475&threadId=1259636 A Canon printer does not require this,.dll. Goodluck Bob Johnston"Computing is great experience, as long as we remember, that it is a machine the requires human input to operate correctly< Bobsan

Thanks for the tips - the strangest thing about the whole mess was that I had/have an identical laptop that I have been using for some time that adds these network printers without an issue. I can't remove and readd the printers without a reboot in between, but I can at least get them added. After messing around for a while and removing the registry key under the printer that was pointing to hpzpnp.dll I was still running into the same issue basically. What I ended up doing was copying that dll from my 'working' laptop to the new laptop in the C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 directory and the printers installed without a hitch. The reg key on the server showed as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\printername\CopyFiles\BIDI the entry was named "Module" and had a value of: spool\DRIVERS\W32X86\3\hpzpnp.dll So even though it is working now could I possibly change that to point at nothing and then not have to copy the dll file to every new laptop/pc I set up?

As you stated you removed the registry key, it does point to nothing. Most likely there are other HP registry entries associated with this printer. Just add a new printer using the correct driver, setup the printer like the original but make the name(2) and sharename(2) so there is not a duplicate. Now delete the original and remove the (2) from the printer name and sharename. You will not have this issue with the HP x64 version of the same drivers, HP never writes this key with those versions, only the 32bit version. HP is aware of this issue.Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

I removed it, but had to replace the key in order to get the printer working again. I'm not too worried about the x64 version as we have no plans at all to use 64 any time soon.