HP Executable drivers, aka WTF is wrong with .INF?

[Mercutio]

So I have some printers.
They are shitty printers. HP 7150s. They are filled with suck and also with lose, but I have several of them and I thought it'd be nice to attach them to a nice, lpr-based print server. Maybe I'll even run out of ink for them before they all die.

These printers, instead of having a proper extractable archive filled with .INF and .CAT and whatever the hell else they are supposed to have, have a single, FEAD Optimized Executable, that dumps a whole bunch of crap into c:\program files, exactly none of which is the .INF, .CAT and whatever else is needed to actually install the printer on another PC. Since the proper driver install files aren't being stored with the other stuff that goes in C:\program files, I have no idea where they go on a system that actually installs the printer.

I've tried about five different programs to open what I know to be that self-extracting archive. None of them will open this particular archive, even things that can purportedly work on FEAD archives (apparently, that normally means UPX compression, but not in this case). The site for the people who made FEAD is no longer on the internet, either.

What the hell am I supposed to do with these thing?

 

[ddrueding]

Great rant, Merc. This is the reason I don't do HP anymore. I downloaded the "basic printer driver" for a networked multifunction Officejet yesterday. It was 38MB, for the "basic" one! And it was a FEAD thing that took 10 minutes to execute on a new but basic PC! When it was done, it went away. Didn't prompt for installation, didn't say where it had extracted to, nada. Just gone. I searched the hard drive for the files, nowhere. I left without getting it fixed, and get to poke at it some more today.

If you find a solution, I would love to hear about it.

 

[Mercutio]

BullshitFEADarchive.exe -nos_ne -nos_o"C:\FEADBullshit" (note the lack of a space between the o and the ")

Will extract the archive.

That did not fix my problem, though. I sat and installed a 7150 several times on different PCs. It turns out that the installation is layered. The HP printer driver doesn't install until an executable tells it that a driver for DOT4 USB printer support is in place. If there's no USB connection (as there wouldn't be with an lpr printer), the actual printer driver just isn't available.

Another particular bit of hilarity with the 7150 installer is that it will not execute on Server 2003.

 

[sechs]

HP: Our hardware is crappy. The users who buy it are obviously stupid. Have the programmers in India make it impossible to install any way except through our installer.

 

[Fushigi]

As I've stated elsewhere, though, there are exceptions. My OfficeJet was detected by Vista and it installed suitable drivers for print, scan, and fax. HP doesn't even publish drivers for my device for Vista.

I suspect Merc's issue has something to do with more recent printers where they're taking the print processing logic out of the device & moving it into the drivers. It makes for cheaper printers and theoretically updatable logic, but mostly cheaper printers. And a dependency on drivers. Side effects are limited OS choices & connectivity issues.

 

[Piyono]

I still buy LaserJet 4's. Even after 12 years they still work and have drivers built into every OS on the planet.

 

[Tannin]

I haven't bought an HP product since Tea was 7 years old.

 

[time]

I can't recall using an HP laser printer (except for some ancient ones) for years now. The copier companies appear to have won that war.

Wretched HP inkjets, on the other hand, are everywhere. 38MB is laughably tiny compared to the normal software install with these pestilential printers.

Last time I made inquiries (a few months ago?), HP had only a handful of inkjets compatible with a print server. Canon had just a couple.

 

[hacksaw]

What the hell am I supposed to do with these thing?

I fear I'm too late with this suggestion, but checking my Debian setup (with CUPS, HPIJS, and HPLIP installed), it looks like there's support for the HP Photosmart 7150 printer series. You could try attaching one of them to a network-aware Linux system, and then share it. Do you still have one around to try?

 

[hacksaw]

....at which point any Windows system on the network would need a driver in order to send data to the Linux system's printer. Gah. Sorry. It's too early on a Saturday for me to be writing.

Maybe you could find an all-Linux environment for them.

 

[Mercutio]

For what it's worth, I was trying to set the printers in question up on a linux-based print server appliance which claimed compatibility with an overwhelming majority of printer hardware. Just not the printers I wanted.

It wasn't worth my time to deal with them. They're probably in a landfill someplace now.