I had an unusual situation with windows 7 64 and a HP PSC1410 printer.

There are 2 networked computers:

An older XP PC with the HP PSC1410 attached via USB, and a newer PC running windows 7 64 bit.

So I do what I have done in the past:

• Make sure both PCs are part of the same workgroup.
• Share the HP printer.
• From the W7 PC, I add the shared networked printer. But that doesn’t work, since the XP PC cannot deliver the W7 printer drivers to the W7 PC.

At this stage, the obvious step is to download and install the W7 software from the HP website.

So I run the install software, and I’m told to connect the printer to the USB port…

Is there an option to find the printer over the network? No.

Is there an option to install the driver anyway, and connect the printer later? No.

So now I have to disconnect the printer, carry it back upstairs to the W7 PC, install the driver software (and connect the printer when I’m told (Grrr).

When the install process is complete, I disconnect the HP printer, carry it downstairs again, connect it to the XP PC, again…

Finally, I can use W7 to install the shared PSC1410 printer as a networked printer.

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if HP could provide software thats a bit more flexible, or maybe Windows 7 needs to be a bit smarter at finding drivers?