“Use of HP UPD is in my experience counter productive.”

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Dale

Use of HP UPD is in my experience counter productive.

If you need to print to HP use the CLJ 9500MFP PS driver (or PCL6 or PCL5c if you must).
This driver works on HP LaserJets.
This driver is cluster compliant comes in 64bit and 32bit flavours and works with Novell/Iprint Citrix – the lot.

Some care needs to be taken with configuration to ensure best performance.
– Within advanced disabled "advanced features"
– Ensure font substitution is set to "down load soft font"
– Set print processor to "winprint" & "raw"
– Stop PDF pass thru
– Stop PDF error handler

Although this driver only supports 4 trays max it will work with any number of trays, just use paper type when sending job.

If this does not work for you, or you want to print faster use Adobe’s Universal Print Driver – it’s easy to modify the PPD to add duplex and colour – it took me about 30 mins to sort and test.

– wapicho commenting on I’m not the only one annoyed with HP’s UPD print driver.

Use of any Universal Print Printer is counter productive, is what I think too.
I’ve discussed before why printer vendors like to use UPDs (hint: they’re a pack of cheap bastards), and why I loath them.

Wapicho’s advice is good, and should work very well. Particularly with Citrix environments, which can be fussy.

Reminds me what I used to do in the past to get troublesome laser printers to work. Use the HP LaserJet 4 driver.
The HP LaserJet 4 Postscript driver is a handy “works with almost everything” driver, particularly Citrix. But it has it’s limitations (lack of more than 2 trays, for example).

In the far far past, LaserJet 2 drivers were a good substitute for just about any Postscript printer.

The printer does not print “Watermarks”.

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Dale

The problem was described to me like this:

When you print to the network printer, and want to use the “URGENT” watermark setting, it does not work.
When you print to a locally installed printer, it works.

The answer?
When I install the printer driver on the Windows Server I specify WinPrint / RAW as the print processor.
When you install it yourself, on your PC, the driver picks its’ default (in this case LMABT54C), and the Watermarks feature works.

So why do we use WinPrint / RAW on servers?
It’s a known quantity. In other words, I know it works (mostly), and more importantly, as it’s a user-mode DLL, it is stable.
I don’t want some crappily written HP or Lexmark DLL* crashing my print server, or Citrix server, thank you.

Further reading:
Basic Printing Architecture (Ask The Microsoft EPS Windows Server Performance Team)
Disabling Advanced Printing Features (Ask The Microsoft EPS Windows Server Performance Team)

* – in this instance, it was a Lexmark Universal print driver causing the problem. Given the build quality of the Lexmark printers I’ve seen, I wouldn’t trust their software drivers.

I’m not the only one annoyed with HP’s UPD print driver.

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Dale

A month ago Nitin Kohli commented:

HP Universal Print Driver (UPD) works very well with Novell.
Please fidn the info on Novell Support site.
http://www.novell.com/support/viewContent.do?ex…
Hope this will helps to all, who have issues with HP UPD on Novell environemnt.

No, it does not. Let’s look at that Novell article I linked to in my blog post, and the same one you quoted back to me:

Does iPrint work with HP’s Universal Printer Drivers?

… While the functionality with the UPD and the iPrint Client 5.12 is better, there continues to be some limitations. The ability to configure a UPD with iPrint’s Printer Driver Profile (PDP) feature will require drastic changes in the PDP creation process. These changes have not been implemented yet.

…

iPrint cannot present the correct printer driver options to the administrator to configure the PDP when the driver is universal. One consideration Novell is investigating is to change the PDP creation process to prompt the administrator to provide the IP address of the printer so the universal driver can present the appropriate configurable driver features specific to that printer model to the administrator. …

“These changes have not been implemented yet”.

No, that’s because they are in UPD 5.0, which is due for release late June..

The situation we have at the moment, is that we can’t purchase and install new HP printers because of the UPD 5.0 requirement.
Even with iPrint 5.12 and UPD 5.0, we will still need to change our iPrint settings so we can have the privilege of using new HP printers.

How long have we been waiting?

Since February (UPD 4.7.2 release didn’t work for us), IF we’re being kind to HP.
JULY 2008 if we’re being bloody honest about it.

Seems I’m not the only person upset with HP.

My previous HP UPD posts have been:
HP lets buggy print driver lurk on web. (March 2009)
“Unable to store job at printer” (January 2009)
Still a pack of cheap bastards (December 2008)
HP still dragging their feet on the Universal Print Driver (November 2008)
HP Universal Print Driver – shame it doesn’t work with Novell Netware (October 2008)

“Unable to store job at printer”

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Dale

Saw this error while setting up a HP Color LaserJet 3525 printer, with the HP Postscript Universal Print Driver (UPD).

The problem was caused by several factors:

not doing an “Update Configuration” after installing the print driver.
send a 250 page report to the printer.
being forced to use the HP Postscript Universal Print Driver.

The fix was to run “Update Configuration” option.

Have I mentioned that I loath the HP UPD??

Oh, yes I have:
Still a pack of cheap bastards
HP still dragging their feet on the Universal Print Driver
HP Universal Print Driver – shame it doesn’t work with Novell Netware

Still a pack of cheap bastards

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Dale

HP’s Universal Print Driver (UPD) v4.7.0 has finally been released. You might remember that I wrote that HP designed UPD because they are a pack of cheap bastards.

The one thing HP have been consistently great at is their Laserjet printer range. They just work. And now HP want to trash all that built-up good will by wanting to reduce their costs.

Now UPD 4.7.0 is supposed to be iPrint compatible.
Except that you need to deploy a new version of iPrint to all your desktops.
And a Microsoft patch as well.

Oh, and UPD 4.7.0 has issues with Citrix. Namely CPU spiking and StressPrinters test issues. HP know this and acknowledge it. The fix (UPD 4.7.2) will be out in March 2009.

So why is UPD being promoted again? Oh that’s right, HP are a pack of cheap bastards.

(previous UPD posts here, and here.)

HP Universal Print Driver – shame it doesn’t work with Novell Netware.

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Dale

Being cheap bastards conscious of the support costs of maintaining device-specific printer drivers, HP has come up with the HP Universal Print Driver (UPD).

Works great on Microsoft Windows based print servers.

Absolute rubbish with Novell iPrint.

When you install a Windows based UPD, the UPD says to the printer

What features do you have?

With iPrint, the UPD software tries to speak to something called IPD, and NOT the printer. Because the UPD isn’t speaking to the printer, it fails to determine what features your printer has. In the worse case, your printer won’t print.

HP have known about this issue since at least July, and we’re not seen a fix yet.

Shame really. The CP6015 would have been a nice printer.

Ref(s):
iPrint – Vista – HP UPD – Supported- – NOVELL FORUMS (July 2008)
Novell Support TID 7001400- iPrint and HP Universal Printer Drivers (Sept 2008)

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