[JohnE]

A friend of mine has just bought an all-in-one device which she's installed on her main computer. This gave her the opportunity of removing her old printer so it could be attached to an old PC which, until then, hadn't had a printer. The old printer is a HP Deskjet 3500. I went through the installation process which is as follows:-

1) Make sure that the printer is disconnected from the PC.
2) Run the installation program.
3) At a certain point, it asks you to connect the printer so the installation can continue.

The printer is a USB device. Unfortunately, when I connect it, the installer program doesn't recognise it. It just sits there, waiting for the printer to be connected. Device Manager, however, does recongnise the printer - coming up with an "Unknown device" called Deskjet 3500.

The installer program issues a dire warning about never running the app with the printer already connected. However, because it wouldn't work by the "recommended" method, I tried connecting the printer first and then running the install app. However, that didn't make any difference.

My friend told me that when she first bought the printer she asked another friend to install it (on the first PC) and he had exactly the same problem. It finally took him about 7 hours to figure out a way to install the thing.

I don't want to waste 7 hours. Can anyone think of a way to get the darn printer installed??