Vanishing inkjet printer, connected via AirPort Express and Bonjour

E

ewestby

Member
I am a registered owner of Parallels Desktop 2.5 build 3188. I have an HP DeskJet 6980 inkjet printer connected to my AirPort network via the USB port on my AirPort Express. All Macs on the network can see the printer with no problem. I have installed the drivers for my printer onto my virtual machine, which is running Windows XP Pro SP2.

When I attempt to connect from Windows to my printer using Apple's Bonjour printer wizard, the printer is initially visible, but within a second or two it simply vanishes: it blinks on and off the network as if the virtual machine cannot see it consistently. It is impossible to complete setup or print anything to it from the virtual machine.

Thinking that maybe this was a pecularity of this particular model, I dug our old Canon i950 out of storage and tried that in its place. The result was precisely the same: the printer initially appeared in the Bonjour wizard, then vanished.

Is there a known issue with connecting to AirPort networked USB printers via Bonjour? I scoured the FAQ and documentation, but they both seem to indicate that this should work fine. I submitted this same support request via the email support mechanism just now, but I thought it'd be prudent to check here too. I found several similar threads, but all of them indicated that Bonjour should be the solution, not the problem! Ah well....

Thanks,
Eric
 
You need to uninstall the XP drivers and use the Bonjour drivers instead.

From an old thread:
I would recommend the following:

Uninstall the printer drivers from Windows.

Make sure the printer drivers are working properly when you print under OSX. If you have to reinstall the drivers in OSX, reboot.

Reboot the VM. Run the Bonjour printer wizard and select the generic postscript driver. If the Bonjour Print Wizard offers you the specific driver for your printer, it is OK to take it. I have an HP7310 and Bonjour found the specific driver so I did not have to use the generic postscript driver.

However, this seems to work only if you have not tried to install drivers on XP, and just use whatever is already there. When I tried to use the XP Driver install CD from HP, it just gummed up the OSX drivers so they didn't work either.
 
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately the symptom is the same even when no drivers have been installed: when using Bonjour, the printer initially appears in the list, then vanishes. I am unable to get to the point at which I would select any driver -- be it the proper inkjet driver or the generic Postscript driver as you suggested -- because Bonjour returns the message that the printer is no lnger available.

I'm also not sure I follow: why would I install a Postscript driver for an inkjet printer?
 
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