TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

This is the usual story - printer works fine, laptop works fine, printer works from elsewhere in the network, blah blah blah.  The HP is hooked directly to the network without a print server PC attached to it. The "Full" Hewlett-Packard installation package consistently refused to install the printer.  Which was strange, since it had been installed before!  And worked before! Symptoms were that you would run the install, and after a few seconds of "Adding Network Port", it would say "Installation failed", and give you some bullshit instructions for fixing the issue. Running the installation package from local drives vs. network drives made no difference.  Uninstalling and reinstalling the HP software made no difference. I suspected that Windows 7 x64 was having trouble adding the virtual TCP/IP port.  I did some research and found a registry hack that purported to solve the issue.  I removed 5 port, four of which were "_1", "_2...

Windows 7 x64 doesn't ship with the driver for the 2600n, and won't recognize it if you try and add it. If you try to get the driver for the 2600n from the HP website, you will find on run that it asks you to plug in the USB cable - which this printer does not have.  Good one, HP. However, for some reason, running the package up to the USB connection and hitting 'cancel' installs enough stuff for Win7 to correctly identify the 2600n. So, the recipe is: 1.  Download the latest driver from the HP website. 2.  Run it. 3.  When it asks you to plug in the USB cable, hit "Cancel" and quit. 4.  Go to Control Panel / Devices and Printers and run Add Printer. 5.  Select Network Printer, then IP address, and type in the correct IP for your printer. 6.  W7 x64 should correctly recognize the printer at this point, where previously it did not.