64-bit Driver for HP 6MP / 6P for Windows 10

I just spent close to two hours figuring this out, but finally got it working. Apparently, Windows has stopped supplying the 64-bit driver for the HP LaserJet 6MP even though it used to be accessible by using the "Windows Update" button to fully populate the list of printers. I just got a new PC with Windows 10 Pro, and it simply was not there. (Yes, I know it used to be there. My searching revealed several screen shots that people posted clearly showing it.) After accessing Windows Update and waiting about a minute for the full list of printers to populate, I had lots of printers in the "HP" category, just nothing close to 6P or 6MP.

Other posts indicated I should be able to download the driver from Microsoft here:
http://www.catalog.update.microsoft....arch.aspx?q=6P

But I tried these, and they only support 32-bit OS

There was no help on the HP driver site. I tried the Generic PCL6 driver, but it resulted in the PCL error when I printed a simple test page from Word.

The solution was to locate HP's Generic PCL5 driver. Unfortunately, HP seems to have purged it from their site. They say that both PCL5 and PLC6 generic drivers are available, but I sure couldn't find it. The file you need is called "upd-pcl5-x64-5.9.0.18326.exe"

I was able to find it hosted here:
Universal PCL5 Print Driver for HP v5.9.0.18326

Obviously, run a virus scan on the file when you download it. I was happy to see that the file had a valid digital signature, which you can see in the "properties".

Run the exe and extract the files to a folder. I did not run the HP installer. I just updated the printer driver manually and clicked the "have disk" button and navigated to the folder. The driver will be called "HP Universal Printing PCL 5" and it works! Yea!

I hope this post is helpful to others like me who want to keep their old LaserJet printers going.

Greg

I wonder whether the driver from the Microsoft Update Catalog would have served? http://www.catalog.update.microsoft....rch.aspx?q=6mp The version number is 6.1.7233.0.

The obvious drawback is that the download is a .cab file, which complicates the installation slightly.

bobkn said:

I wonder whether the driver from the Microsoft Update Catalog would have served? http://www.catalog.update.microsoft....rch.aspx?q=6mp The version number is 6.1.7233.0.

The obvious drawback is that the download is a .cab file, which complicates the installation slightly.

That was the first link in my post. Notice that the date on all of those .cab files is June 2006 - over 13 years ago. Did we even have 64-bit Windows that long ago? Anyway, I had tried two of those files - the 4th one and the last one in the list - and found that they were 32-bit.

gregn928 said:

That was the first link in my post. Notice that the date on all of those .cab files is June 2006 - over 13 years ago. Did we even have 64-bit Windows that long ago? Anyway, I had tried two of those files - the 4th one and the last one in the list - and found that they were 32-bit.

I didn't notice, sorry.

The link I provided is slightly different: I searched on 6MP.

The fifth entry claims to be for "AMD64 , ARM64 , X86". (Above it is one for IA64. Of no use unless you have an Intel Itanium based system.) AMD64 is the normal 64 bit version of Windows. I can't say whether it would actually work on a "windows 98.1 and later" system.

Checking Wikipedia, WinXP Pro X64 was released in 2005. (Not relevant.) Vista X64 became available at retail in January of 2007.

bobkn said:

I didn't notice, sorry.

The link I provided is slightly different: I searched on 6MP.

The fifth entry claims to be for "AMD64 , ARM64 , X86". (Above it is one for IA64. Of no use unless you have an Intel Itanium based system.) AMD64 is the normal 64 bit version of Windows. I can't say whether it would actually work on a "windows 98.1 and later" system.

Oh, your right. Clicking on that fifth file does bring up a promising description. So, I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the .cab and extracted it to a temporary folder. Then I went in to update the driver for the printer, clicked on "have disk" and navigated to the .ini file in the folder. It seemed happy, and I thought it was going to work, but then this error message popped up.


I also tried doing it a different way, by right-clicking on the .ini file and choosing "install", but that also gave me a similar error.

gregn928 said:

Oh, your right. Clicking on that fifth file does bring up a promising description. So, I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the .cab and extracted it to a temporary folder. Then I went in to update the driver for the printer, clicked on "have disk" and navigated to the .ini file in the folder. It seemed happy, and I thought it was going to work, but then this error message popped up.
(snip)

I also tried doing it a different way, by right-clicking on the .ini file and choosing "install", but that also gave me a similar error.

I don't know whether this would work, but you could try installing the .cab. Install CAB file in Windows 10

bobkn said:

I don't know whether this would work, but you could try installing the .cab. Install CAB file in Windows 10

Okay. So, I tried both of the approaches in Install CAB file in Windows 10, but they didn't work. In both cases, I got the same error I had seen previously: "The system cannot find the file specified."

However, something I read there gave me an idea, so I tried a totally different approach, and it ended up working. So, thank you for your persistence on suggesting that I keep trying! Previously, I had been using the native ability of Windows Explorer to view and extract the contents of the .cab file. This turned out to be a bad choice. Apparently, Windows Explorer does not preserve the directory structure in the .cab. Therefore, it is imperative to use 7zip, WinRAR or some other archive program to extract the files properly. I used Zipware to do it. Once I had the .cab extracted properly, I was able to install the driver manually.

Here are step-by-step instructions for anyone else who needs to do this:

1. Access the Microsoft Update Catalog with https://www.catalog.update.microsoft...rch.aspx?q=6mp

2. Choose the fifth item in the catalog list and click the "Download" button. This will allow you to download the file 4188_bacd1413e93b4a6362d9a2ca653c869f1c02f6f7.cab

3. Use 7zip, WinRAR or Zipware to extract the .cab file to a folder.

4. In Windows 10 settings, go to Printers & Scanners, select your LaserJet printer and click "Manage"

5. Click "Printer Properties" and then go to the "Advanced" tab.

6. Click "New driver" then "next" and "Have disk". Then browse to the folder where you unzipped the .cab and click "open" then "ok". A list of printers will appear. Scroll down to "HP LaserJet 6MP" or whatever your printer is. Click "next" and "finish" and then you will be good to go!

Thanks for the post.

I thought that there had to be a way, although I didn't know it. I wonder why Windows Update doesn't do it automatically? (The file description says for Windows 8.1 and later.)

bobkn said:

Thanks for the post.

I thought that there had to be a way, although I didn't know it. I wonder why Windows Update doesn't do it automatically? (The file description says for Windows 8.1 and later.)

Yes. It does seem like clicking "Windows Update" should make the 6P and 6MP drivers show up, but they don't. And it seems like it's been a problem for a while. Here is a post on the HP Community forum 12 months ago where someone else encountered the same issue: HP LaserJet 6P Driver Missing?

The machine I configured yesterday was a new HP Z2 Tower Workstation that came with Windows 10 Professional installed. So, I'm guessing it has something to do with newer Windows installations. When I pressed the "Windows Update" button to have it automatically look for new drivers, I did see several dozen older LaserJet printers populated in the list. I just didn't see the really old ones like my 6MP. I looked carefully through them all, expecting it to be in there somewhere. Nope.

I have seen too some Windows 64-bit drivers that normally work in Windows 7 to fail in 10 because they expect some system files that are present in 7 but not in 10. Use the driver that worked.