HP Deskjet F340 All-in-One Printer not working with Airport Extreme

I have been getting the same problem with my HP inkjet printer (HP Deskjet 3845). It works just fine when connected directly to my the USB port on my Intel Mac and the driver (HP Inkjet 3.3.1) is recognized automatically, but when connecting the same printer to the USB port on my Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11g), the driver cannot be found. Before I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.1) on an Intel Mac, my printer used to work just fine when connected to the same AEBS with a PowerMac G5 running Mac OS X Tiger.

I have already tried manually downloading and installing new drivers from HP, updating all my software and firmware, resetting my AEBS, resetting my printing system under System Preferences, and unplugging and reconnecting my computer, printer, and AEBS. I know other people have been having the same difficulties and I'm hoping that there's a solution out there that does not involve me having to buy a new printer.

Just to be clear, the problem is not that my printer doesn't work, or that there's something wrong with my airport network. My printer connects and is recognized just fine by the network, the problem here seems to be that the computer cannot find which driver to use when connecting to the printer via Airport.

I would gladly welcome any suggestions.

Hi thsoto,

Not sure if you're still looking for an answer, but I believe I've found a fix to the missing driver problem when connecting your USB printer to Airport. I found this fix after digging around in the Apple support forums for a while and it seems to have worked for me.

You need to download some open-source print drivers from the link below. This solution was apparently provided by HP to someone who was having the similar difficulties in printing. So follow the link below to download and install the "ESP Ghostscript", "Foomatic RIP", and the "HPIJS" drivers (make sure that you install the Ghostscript and Foomatic files first). Then add your printer again to the list under System Preferences, select the one that says "Bonjour" and the appropriate driver should be selected automatically for you. Here's the link.

http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/hpijs

Hope this works for you!

I'll give it a try. I would like to see an official fix from Apple, but this will have to do for now.

Ok It works. Prints slower then time and blacks aren't black. I think it's treating everything as colour. I'll have to do some fiddling with it.

Those printer drivers do work. i.e. it does print. BUT the only options I get now are printing from the black and white cartride or from the colour cartridge exclusively. The same occurs when I hook the printer up directly to my mbp.

I uninstall all these items, hook up the printer directly and use the Apple/HP supplied drivers(HP Inkjet 3.3.1) I get true blacks and colours. i.e. it prints from both at the same time.

So, this is still a problem. Any other ideas? Apple are you listening? Any one know if this might be fixed 10.5.3 that's pending release?

I think that we're having problems with connecting to an HP printer on the Airport because of the way HP chooses to package their drivers. I have the Deskjet F340 with the latest drivers and here is what I see:

There does not exist a single file provided in the HP download that is 'the driver'; instead there is a bunch of complicated HP garbage, like the 'HP ALL-IN-ONE DEVICE CHOOSER', which I believe is responsible for managing the driver. When I try to add the printer through Bonjour, a dialog box asks me to select a driver. Since I can't find a 'simple' driver for this printer then there is no way that I can get the MAC OS to install the driver when I try to add the printer.

I'm not feeling too good about HP at this point. I understand why they want to manage their hardware with the HP heavy hand, but they should offer up the drivers as individual files without all of the other HP garbage!