I loaded the driver locally, as if the printer was connected to LPT1, then I try to connect to the printer on the server. This fails because it can't find a driver (even though a fake printer of that model is already configured on my system) Why is it that the printer driver model is broken so badly that you can't add Win7 machines and print to existing, working printers? Works fine from Linux. Maybe you guys should look into how they do it.... Oh yea, I should point out, that these printers are connected to a Server 2003 (32 bit) box (not directly connected to the network), something you would think would make this easier. Looks like HP has finally punted on supporting all the driver models for windows and pushes it off to MS to deal with it. This should work really well.......

Hi Mark, The HP Support suggests us to install the printer driver using the following steps. 1. Open Devices and Printers2. Click Add a printer. 3. Select Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer in the Add Printer Wizard. 4. In the list of available printers, select the printer, and then click Next. 5. If prompted, install the printer driver on your computer. If we cant add the printer in this method, you can try to down the driver from the following link http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=29790&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=29789&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=4063 In addition, we can find the driver in the following link according to the printer model. http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Home.aspx After downloading the driver, we can try the following steps to install the driver. 1. Open Devices and Printers2. Click Add a printer. 3. Select Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer in the Add Printer Wizard. 4. In the list of available printers, select the printer, and then click Next. 5. Browse to the downloaded driver to install the driver. I hope this can help you. John John

When I follow the procedure outlined, at a certain point a window opens up asking me to browse to the the driver. I have downloaded from the HP site a universal driver and also a Vista 64 bit driver that is supposed to work with Windows 7. In the browse window, there are about 10 .inf files listed. But I don't know which .inf file I'm supposed to use in order to install the driver. Plus, when I try each .inf driver one by one, none seem to work. Is there some thing I'm missing here?

As you have installed the printer locally, we can redirect the printer port form LPT1 to TCP port to use the installed driver. To do so, right click the HP Laserjet 1200 printer in Devices and Printers, choose Printer properties, change to the Ports tab, then select Create a new port to add a new TCP port. Choose Local Port as the type of the port. Then In the box "Enter a port name", type \\printer server\printer name. I have included a link for you convenience, although the KB is for Win XP, the steps are similar in Windows 7. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/314073 I hope this can help you.

This was the way I solved it. Glad I only had to do this for my machine. Those poor fools that have to support an entire organization, I feel for them.