Timothy Miller

Q: Trouble with HP OfficeJet Driver

This sorry tale involves my HP OfficeJet Pro 8100 vs. OS 10.10.5. If you have this printer, or a similar one, you might run into it to. Forewarned is forearmed.

 

Act One: My MacBook battery is going dead in an hour, and my machine is running hot. Activity Monitor shows that my HP printer driver is maxing out the CPU. A bit investigation here on the forum reveals the remedy. System Preferences --> Printers and Scanners --> Delete the HP printer driver.

 

Act Two: Attempt to download new driver from the HP website. I follow all the instructions, plug in the printer, turn it on, download a little app that downloads the driver. I get an alert -- Download has failed, check your network connections. No other explanation. My network connections are fine, thank you. Rinse, repeat & fail X several. Try restarting the Macbook, the routers, the printer and so on. Rinse, repeat & fail. The download usually fails at the 27.1 or 27.2 MB mark.

 

Act Three: Look for further information on HP's very un-helpful website. I get bupkis. Try to get in touch with tech support. That doesn't go well, possibly because I am impatient, possibly because of a hostile user interface. I notice a personal message from the CTO or somebody like that. Contact him directly if I am dissatisfied with customer support. I do that. Three days later, I get a missed call and voicemail from tech support at 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon. I have to call back before 5 PM my, ask for the rep by name, the rep does not work on Sunday or Monday, the ticket inspires in 72 hours.

 

Act Four: I call the number left by the rep. I wait for fifteen minutes, talk to a rep, who turns out to be clueless, only a clerk, who will assist me by putting me in touch with the "Macintosh Team." Wait another thirty minutes. The rep wants to know the serial number and exact model number of the printer. I'm excited. She really knows her stuff. She is going to diagnose the problem and fix it, because she is smart and highly trained! Then she wants my zip code, then my address. WHAT!!??!! Turns out this has all be a setup for a hard sell for an extended warranty on my printer. To get her to back off, I have to be rather rude.

 

Act Five: The rep takes remote control of my desktop, does through exactly the same steps described in Act Two, gets the same result, even though she knows I have already rinsed and repeated many times. Along the way I discover she is completely clueless. When it's time to enter my password to enable the download and installation she wants me to install my WiFi password, and gets all argumentative when I tell her that is wrong. She calms down when the download proceeds. When the download fails, I wait ten minutes while she "confers with the Macintosh team." All this could have been avoided. I explained Act Two clearly in my previous email, which she had in front of her.

 

Act Six: The rep comes back on the phone, navigates to System Preferences --> Printers and Scanners. She explains that the download failed because my OS was "overly-updated." In other words, HP does not offer a driver compatible with OS 10.10.5. The HP driver has miraculously reappeared, though I had carefully un-installed it. I don't know why the driver has re-appeared. I don't know if this represents the same driver that had previously failed and caused trouble. The rep doesn't know either. She offers to "confer with the Macintosh team" again. I decline. It's possible that no driver download and re-install was necessary in the first place.

 

Act Seven: The magical non-downloaded driver seems to work fine. Even WiFi printing works. Even the hard-sell to buy more yellow ink from HP works.

 

If anyone knows, how did the driver magically reappear? Is it the same bad one that failed last week, probably because of incompatibility with OS 10.10.5?

 

This has been an excellent printer for the past year. Nevertheless, I have a really bad taste in my mouth. I'm inclined to throw this thing in the trash, go out and buy a Brother printer. I have one at the office, it's the best.

MacBook, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), 8 GB RAM

Posted on Sep 14, 2015 11:29 AM

Close

Q: Trouble with HP OfficeJet Driver

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers