Can not add HP Photosmart 385

I upgraded from Windows 7 where I used my HP Photosmart 385 printer as my camera card reader (I have it hooked up to the computer via a USB cable). When I upgraded to Windows I lost the 385 as a printer. I tried to add the printer and all I got for my effort was that it installed in Device Manager as a IEEE 1284.4 compatible printer. It does not appear as a printer at all, only as "other device" when I look up my devices in Windows 10. What in the world is going on??

I see that HP hasn't made drivers available for that printer since XP. Windows 10 is supposed to include drivers for it.

It may work if you run through the install all the way to installing specific drivers for a printer that Windows didn't recognize. The installation advice at HP may be helpful:

HP Printers - Installing and Using the Windows Built-in Print Driver | HP® Customer Support

The IEEE 1284.4 is a Centronics printer interface. (One type is for the old parallel port.) I think that must be there by mistake. Your Photosmart 385 must be a USB device.

I wrote the earlier post when I was away from a Win 10 machine. I'm in front of a Win 10 PC now.

The way to install drivers built-in to Win 10:

Go into the "devices and printers" control panel. Click on "Add a printer". In the next windows, click on "the printer that I want isn't listed". In the new window, go to the bottom of the pane and select "add a local printer or network printer with manual settings". Click "next". In the new window, select "USB002" under "Use an existing port". Click "Next" again.

In the new window, you can select HP drivers. The bad news is that I don't know which driver is suited to the 385. It may be one of the generic Photosmart PCL3 drivers, but there are 3 different ones of those.

There are several approaches. The first would be to download the HP Printer Install Wizard:

http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Nav?h...keyword=dg-PIW

to see whether it succeeds where Win 10 did not.

Another way would be to contact HP Support to see whether they can tell you which driver is appropriate.

The third way would be to just spend time experimenting with manually installing plausible drivers in the hope that one will work.

I suggest that you ignore Post #3. The one fact that's in it is mistaken, and the opinions expressed I disagree with as well.

No guarantees that the printer will ultimately work satisfactorily, but I'd spend a little more effort on it before giving up.

I might have figured out one issue that might be causing some of this. I think I have the 385 USB cable plugged in to a USB hub. This didn't bother in XP or 7 but could it be causing my problem??

bro67 said:

So once again, you need to edit your post and remove what is considered a direct attack on another user.

If a correction is an attack, I'll let the moderators inform me of that. (More likely, they'd just delete the post.) I suppose that "wrong" is a form of name calling. Let me do it again: wrong.

Here's an alternate HP view:

HP Software and Driver Downloads for HP Printers, Laptops, Desktops and More | HP® Customer Support


(Claims that there are built-in drivers in 10 to support the Photosmart 385.)

Microsoft takes a similar view:

Windows Compatibility Center: hp photosmart 385


I'm not using any HP printers at the moment, but I have a B&W Brother laser printer (HL-5150D) in place. I don't recall its exact vintage, but it's old enough to have both parallel port and USB inputs. Brother hasn't made a driver package available for it since Vista. Proves nothing about an HP printer, of course, but it's an example of a printer that has support only through drivers provided with the OS.

I continue to suggest that Snikr not give up just yet. I'm not sure that using a USB hub would prevent detection of the printer, but it sounds plausible.

For the Brother HL5150D, I ran through the manual driver install because I didn't see the 5150D in Devices. Turned out to be unnecessary: it was already installed, but not visible. (It was exactly the same under Windows 8.1)

I also have an HL-3070CW (cheap color laser, built in wireless). I have it connected to my router via Ethernet. Windows failed to recognize it. I was able to install it using the installer package for Windows 8.1.

I'd complain about the flakiness of 10 (or 8.1), but a couple of weeks ago, I installed a wireless printer for a friend. I struggled until I connected a laptop to it by USB and configured it up that way. (That was not supposed to be necessary.) After that, all was serene. That was on Win 7 Home X64.

I also have a Laserjet 1200 Printer and it works perfectly under W10 using the built-in Windows Update driver. And it's almost 20 years old. Yes, it also has got a LPT (Centronics) port as well as an usb one (using usb right now). I also advice the OP to keep searching and testing.

Well I kind of fixed the "issue". I rolled back to Windows 7 and the 385 works fine. I guess the Windows 10 driver doesn't do what the XP/7 driver did. Time for Microsoft to step up and fix this!

snikr said:

I upgraded from Windows 7 where I used my HP Photosmart 385 printer as my camera card reader (I have it hooked up to the computer via a USB cable). When I upgraded to Windows I lost the 385 as a printer. I tried to add the printer and all I got for my effort was that it installed in Device Manager as a IEEE 1284.4 compatible printer. It does not appear as a printer at all, only as "other device" when I look up my devices in Windows 10. What in the world is going on??

I also have an "Old Printer that the drivers are included" - But they are not. You will have to find those XP Drivers and just run the installer. It may require 16 bit support, and if your OS is 64-bits, I don't think that is included. Open Programs and Features and open Windows Features, and look for NTVDM, this is required for some older printer drivers:



But while I was installing my drivers, I was notified and asked if I wanted to install 16-bit support, which I pressed YES, and it installed that. And then my Printer proceeded to pump out a test page that had been sitting there in the queue.