Using a different HP printer driver to fix the flawed business strategy of not supporting Windows 7 on popular, recently discontinued printers, has been tougher than it should be. As it turns out, there are two major reasons for this, as I recently found out about on a open-source forum dedicated to Linux printing.

The HP LaserJet 1012 printer worked pretty good for most people, but it was falsely advertised as supporting PCL5. Instead, the HP LaserJet 1012 printer actually supports some HP-bastardized version of PCL5. When the 1012 receives PCL5 print jobs it understands most of the commands it receives. Therefore, it is able to handle print jobs correctly that come from another PCL5 printer driver, like the HP LaserJet 3055 print driver for Windows 7.

Unfortunately, this unprofessional, hacked version of PCL 5 does not understand all of the PCL 5 commands it gets, so it just throws those into an error state. Eventually, all of the discarded commands fill up the printer’s buffers and it begins to generate visible error messages in the form of a printout that says only, “Unsupported Personality: PCL”.

Turning the printer off and back on resets clears the buffers out, and the LaserJet 1012 works on Windows 7 again until there is another buffer overrun.

Unfortunately, since it is the printer’s buffers and not the computer’s printing buffers that are overflowing, occasionally restarting the spooler service or other printer services does NOT fix the error of the LaserJet 1012 eventually crapping out with a PCL unsupported error message.

A permanent fix for the HP LaserJet 1012 Windows 7 printer driver issue would then require using a printer driver that has a similarly misused version of PCL5. Unfortunately, HP was never very forthcoming about the fact that its little laser printer didn’t really support PCL5 like it said it did in the first place, so obviously, they are not too forthcoming about which other HP printers supported on Windows 7 use pretend PCL5 either — if there are any.

So, I continue to search for a usable work-around for using my HP LaserJet on Windows 7 until either

• a) I buy a new NON-HP printer to replace it. (HP is officially dead to me.)
• b) I find a driver and Windows 7 printer settings combination that works.

If you would like to help out, please let me know in the comments or an email or a direct message to Best Hubris on Twitter if you come across information about which other HP printers use bogus PCL5 instruction sets, as well as any suggestions you might have for which (if any) Windows 7 settings or printer configuration options might help mitigate the issue of poorly implemented PCL5 command processing leading to errors inside the printer.

HP LaserJet 1012 Printer Driver Windows 7 Failure

My HP LaserJet 1012 printer has been giving me an error message on Windows 7 ever since the release candidate first came out. I got over it at first figuring that it would be fixed in the final release of Windows 7, but unfortunately, that is not what happened. Instead, HP will not support Windows 7 on lots of printers it sold in the years leading up to the release of Windows 7 despite having supported many of them on Windows Vista, and the great similarity between Vista drivers and Windows 7 drivers.

The HP LaserJet printer line is a popular line of decent quality laser printers used in homes and small businesses. In fact, I used to heartily recommend HP printers to anyone who asked, and plenty who did not, whenever the topic came up. The reason for this recommendation is that in all my years supporting computers and networks the one brand of printer that never had any consistent trouble or “unique” trouble (I’m looking at you Brother and your scored fusers from paper jams).

Not only that, but HP printers are well known within the computer industry for lasting a long time. I can’t count the number of times I walked into someone’s cubical and saw some dinosaur HP LaserJet 4 chugging away on some 40 page report. (The original HP 4 laser printer was rated at eight pages per minute and got a lot closer to five pages per minute if you were printing anything other than a very simple page of text.) It was with deep disappointment and eventual distain that I heard HP would not support the HP LaserJet 1012 on Windows 7 operating system. The printer had been discontinued just four years before Widows 7 was released, and was a very popular seller thanks to quality printouts and low price. It all adds up to tens of thousands or more HP LaserJet printer owners left hanging high and dry without printer drivers.

The worst part about all of this is that it takes a college intern a couple of days to turn out a basic printer driver. Of course, that is the problem. The LaserJet series came with bloated multi-function driver / software bundles that nobody really wanted, and that very few people used. However, HP would find it even tougher to justify not upgrading the whole driver bundle than to just abandon the printer altogether.

If you got to this post by clicking on another on this site, then you know that I have found a functioning work-around for printing on Windows 7 with an HP LaserJet 1012 by using an HP LaserJet 3055 PCL5 driver.

However, that is a very imperfect fix because eventually the printer buffers fill up on the 1012 and it starts printing

Unsupported Personality: PCL

error messages as a single line on a blank page of paper. This is particularly inconvenient, because other than the error message on the print out page, there is no other error message. In fact, on the computer that prints there is no error message at all. Unless you are sitting next to the printer and monitoring what comes out of it, you can end up with a dozen error messages printed out and have no idea that it is all failing. In addition to the wasted paper, this is a big problem for those times when you are printing out 15 different lists or a dozen webpages one at a time. It is not always easy to find them again. After all, if you printed them, you probably weren’t planning on having to get back there electronically.

Unsupported Personality Error HP LaserJet 1012 Windows 7 is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

However, there is a new bummer. Looks like a new version of Live Sync is coming. It is currently in beta. However, it looks like the new beta version of Live Sync will not support Windows XP. That wouldn’t be so bad except that it also says that all of your Microsoft sync clients must be updated to the beta version in order to work together. That means you won’t be able to use Live Sync to keep files and folders synchronized between Windows 7 and Windows XP computers unless you keep your Win 7 boxes on the old (current) version of the client. (Maybe some of that will change when the client comes out of beta.)

Windows Live Sync, part of the Microsoft Live Essentials for Windows 7 and other operating systems has been down for a couple of days now. The sync.live.com website says that the Live Sync Website is offline for maintenance and gives a link to the Live Sync newsgroup for more information. Of course, there is no more readily accessible OFFICIAL information posted on the newsgroup, so we can only assume that this is some sort of default setting when there is a problem with Live Sync.

The Live Sync software client installed on each PC has an icon that displays the sync status. Currently, it has alternating arrows blue and white and says “Not Signed In” despite being logged in already with passwords saved.

For this mobile freelance writer, the Live Sync outage is starting to become a pain since I use Live Sync to keep folders and files synchronized between my desktop computer, writing laptop, and my writing netbook.

Hope it comes back up soon and this is not an indicator of things to come.

Windows Live Sync Down Website Says is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Custom Windows 7 Sounds

When installing a new theme, you probably look at the pretty background images, the colors, and maybe how it does or does not support Aero. But, don’t forget that different themes can also come with different sounds.

After weeks of being annoyed by a banjo sound as my windows default beep, I finally went into the Personalize control panel for Windows 7 to change it. I was surprised to find so many sound themes inside. I thought everyone just basically left the default Windows sounds alone with the exception of one or two tweaks here and there.

To save you some time, let me tell you that the best way to search through the Windows sound themes is by selecting the Default Beep sound and then clicking on the little speaker to play a sample of what it will sound like.

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The Default Beep is what you will hear more than anything else while using your computer. It is the beep that you hear when you get an non-critical error message (like when you click the wrong thing), or the beep you hear when you get a basic status message like print job completed, or software updated or whatever. In other words, you had better like the sound of the default beep.

Go through the available Windows 7 sound themes and find the ones that have a default beep that you like, or that you can at least live with. THEN, you can check out the other sounds and pick your favorite customized Windows 7 sound theme. Otherwise, you are just wasting time because you’ll be back trying to fix that annoying banjo sound beep in no time at all.

Enjoy your customized Windows 7 installation. You deserve it.

Happy day.

Customize Windows 7 Sound Themes Personalize It is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Autoruns 10 Utility Shows All Startup Locations

Nothing exposes a big computer programming flaw like a software utility created to fix that bug. Autoruns is a Windows based utility that does just one simple thing. Autoruns shows you all of the programs and services set to run at startup on a Windows computer system. Only, it is NOT a simple thing.

Originally, the only programs that started running automatically at boot up were those that were required by the operating system in order to make the computer work. However, programs added to the folder labeled "Startup" on Windows computers would also run at startup.

It turns out that people don’t necessarily want a bunch of programs automatically running every time that they start up their computer. In fact, most people would rather start programs when, and only when, they needed to use them. So, savvy computer users began deleting programs out of the Startup menu and the race between crappy, bloated, software and computer system users was on.

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Software developers can’t wean themselves off the crutch of starting their software automatically or pre-loading some or all of a computer program at boot time. Microsoft kicked this trend off by putting a Microsoft Office toolbar that nobody wanted – especially when they found out how much system power it wasted to run – in the startup folder. Other software developers followed cramming toolbars and other useless items into the various start at boot locations available on Windows operating system computers.

Bloated Adobe Acrobat Reader

Adobe became the poster child for system resource abuse when it began pre-loading a hefty chunk of its overweight Acrobat Reader at boot time.

As PDF files became a more commonly used format, the glaring bloat and inefficiency of Adobe software became more apparent to even non-expert computer users. When users were browsing a website with their Internet browser and clicked on a link that was to a PDF file, nothing happened.

Actually, that isn’t really true. What was true, was that nothing SEEMED to happen. What was actually happening, was that Adobe Acrobat Reader was struggling to load its enormous self in order to display the PDF link. It took literally 10 seconds on some well configured computers for a PDF page to load the first time. It got so bad that people stopped clicking on PDF links because they knew that meant a long weight for even a one-page document. In addition, savvy computer users turned to Acrobat Reader alternatives written by other developers.

In response, instead of re-coding and streamlining it Heifer of a PDF viewer, Adobe chose instead to penalize every computer in the world with Adobe Reader installed by pre-loading part of its software at startup and leave it running the whole time the computer was in use just so that its reader would appear to start faster. Of course, if you are going to abuse people’s system resources, you need to hide it and make sure that they don’t just delete a shortcut or something to end pre-loading the bloated software.

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As it turns out there are literally hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of ways that a software developer can force their applications or utilities to run at start up time on a Windows computer. Unfortunately, there are far fewer ways that users can view and manage all of these vampire processes that suck the performance blood out of computer systems.

Using MSCONFIG to configure which programs run at startup is a joke. Not only can programs easily re-add themselves to startup whenever you do end up running them, MSCONFIG only shows a tiny fraction of the ways that software can be installed to run at bootup. Autoruns 10 was recently released by the folks at Sysinternals (which was acquired by Microsoft, at least in part, no doubt, to stem the tide of data that made Microsoft Windows look bloated, badly configured, and deeply flawed).

Autoruns 10 claim to fame is that it is the most comprehensive startup manager utility in existence because it scans hundreds more potentially hidden startup locations than other startup configuration manager software does.

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Does anyone else see the painful irony here?

In order for the user to be able to make their computer do what they want it to do, they need a special extra tool to sniff out and find all the tricks software development companies use to get the computer to do what the software company wants regardless of what the user wants.

Considering the slow boot time was one of the top reasons people hate Vista so much, you would think that Microsoft would want to put an end to this practice. After all, part of the reason Vista boots so slow and one of the things that can drag the bootup time for Windows XP and the startup time for Windows 7 is all of these auto-starting programs. It doesn’t make the poor quality software that these companies sell look bad, it makes Windows look bad. A quick load would be one way to make people love Windows 7.

Unfortunately, Microsoft depends on these tricks as much as other computer companies, so until they can get their own house in order, users only defense against rogue programs wasting resources is vigilant use of programs like Sysinternals AutoRuns to keep programs from adding themselves to one of the numerous hidden startup locations. Of course, in order to really watch your computer’s resources, you’ll need another third-party utility by, you guessed it, Sysinternals.

Process Explorer is what Task Manager should be, except Task Manager allows software companies to hide what programs and processes they are actually running from Task Manager so, once again, they can look like their software runs better than it really does.

Get Autoruns 10. There isn’t anything else you can do.

Biggest Windows Flaw Also Most Annoying Windows Problem is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Recently, there was some hubbub about Microsoft not intending to deliver the next Internet Explorer version upgrade on the Windows XP platform. It shouldn’t really be a shock since official support for Windows XP has ended, it is not much of leap to figure that the company won’t really be developing much in the way of new software, services, or features for XP, unless there is some sort of strategic advantage in doing so.

The current support end date is April 13, 2010 which marks the end of support for Windows XP Service Pack 2, or SP2 as it is better known. Also, support for Windows Vista RTM ends that day as well, although no one really seems to care about that.

The interesting piece of this situation is that there is no Service Pack 3 for the 64-bit version of XP which means that there is no update to install in order to "catch-up" to the current support window. However, Microsoft has put the 64-bit version on the SP3 end of support timeline, which means essentially, that all XP editions currently running the latest Microsoft Service Pack are set until April 8, 2014 which marks the end of line for those operating systems to receive updates or patches.

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There is some confusion among those not in the IT industry over exactly what is going on here, since Microsoft already said that there was no more support for Windows XP. Allow me to fill in the gaps.

When Microsoft ended XP support it was a mostly symbolic gesture made to push people and businesses to upgrade to Vista, and more seriously, to Windows 7. While regular home users of Windows XP have been "unsupported" for some time now, businesses with various levels of support agreements or volume licensing agreements have continued to receive support under those programs. This is not surprising, since business made it very clear that they were not going to upgrade to Vista. If Microsoft wanted to keep getting the dollars that those service agreements generate, they were going to have to offer the support businesses wanted to pay for which was XP support.

In other words, public, free, Windows XP support is long gone. But, businesses that pay big dollars for their Microsoft support, or that have it as part of their purchase contracts, still get it. Microsoft has continued to release patches and updates for security issues and other technical problems in Windows XP in order to support these business customers. Once developed, there is no reason not to make them available to everyone, so patches and updates have continued to arrive for home users on Windows XP SP2 as well.

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If you are wondering how anyone could still be running XP SP2, the answer lies in the massive, hard to support, even harder to secure, installations within American business. These companies did not adopt SP3 because it contained some new features or "fixes" that either broke something they needed to keep working, or that those companies were worrying would open up security issues or other problems. Keep in mind that some of these companies use computer hardware for several years and each upgrade requires more power than some of their oldest PCs have.

By now, most companies have moved to SP3 and just disabled whatever they did not need out of it, so Microsoft can shutdown SP2 support altogether. That does not mean that those companies are ready to make the move to Windows 7 anytime soon, which is why the SP3 support date is another couple of years into the future. By 2014, Microsoft is hoping that anyone left on Windows SP3 will be the stragglers as opposed to the established majority, like they are today.

What it all means to you is that you need to install SP3, or the next vulnerability that gets discovered in XP won’t get patched on your system which means it is only a matter of time until your PC is overrun with Trojans and viruses.

More importantly, it moves the hand of the Windows XP Doomsday clock closer to midnight.

Windows XP Support Ending Soon is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Just in case you want to follow along from the beginning, or if your particular wireless networking issue seems more like one of these topics, here are the various articles I’ve written explaining the more advanced wireless network troubleshooting that might help solve your problem with Windows wireless networks. If you just need basic wireless network troubleshooting or a Windows wireless network setup guide, I’ll get you those too.

Wireless Network Problems Windows XP and Windows 7

1. Wireless Network Drops Connection Using Windows 7 Troubleshooting
2. Windows Randomly Disconnects from Wireless Network (XP based, but still applicable to Windows 7)
3. Fix Wireless Network Connectivity Problems in Windows XP
4. Windows 7 Wireless Network Random Disconnecting Issue Fixed Yet?
5. Test Wireless Network Signal Strength and Check for Interference with NetSurveyor

As you can see, I’ve spent a lot of time getting into pretty advanced network troubleshooting. I have tried new wireless network hardware such as new wireless routers and new wireless adapters, but still have not gotten a completely satisfactory solution to the issues with wireless networking on Windows computers.

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It also turns out that the troubles with wireless network on Windows aren’t all Microsoft’s fault. Wireless network hardware vendors are so busy trying to out-market the next guy that they don’t pay any attention to wireless networking standards. They are also more interested in selling their new networking hardware than they are in supporting the existing hardware that they aren’t exactly speedy in providing updated network drivers or firmware either.

Be that as it may, with wireless networking equipment that is on the Windows 7 compatibility list, things should work, and when they don’t that is an error that needs to be fixed.

USB Issue Causes Wireless Network Disconnects?

All of which brings us to today’s potential discovery.

There are two tech support articles on Microsoft’s TechNet website (TechNet is Microsoft’s technical support center for IT Pros) that suggest the issue might not be so much with Windows wireless networking in general, but with a specific type of wireless networking hardware. More specifically, it seems that USB wireless adapters might be the problem.

Consider the number of users on Windows support forums or Microsoft support forums who state that their wireless networking problems happen most frequently during heavy use of the network. For example, gamers playing complex streaming games over high-speed modems complain of being kicked off of the wireless network in the middle of a game. Likewise, many users report wireless connectivity troubles when using BitTorrent or copying a large amount of data.

Then, take a look at this Knowledge Base article that suggests moving large amounts of data across a USB port with a certain type of hardware configuration can cause an issue. This is actually about a USB hard drive, but the concept of a lot of data flowing across a USB device is similar to the wireless network high-traffic problem.

Now, more specific to the wireless network USB adapter comes this article which suggests that when using a USB network adapter after the computer has been left idle for one hour (not uncommon for BitTorrent users or for users copying a lot of data from a server) The Knowledge Base article and attached hotfix don’t mention wireless adapters specifically, but the shoe seems to fit.

Does it work?

I have installed both hotfixes on my PC now. The first did not solve the issue on its own. However, since installing the second hotfix three days ago, I have had no wireless network connectivity interruptions. It will take longer to know for sure, but that is a promising sign.

If you are having this issue, I would recommend installing the above hotfixes in the reverse order. That way, you will only install the fixes that you actually need. (Obviously, this does not apply if you do not have a USB wireless adapter.)

Windows 7 Wireless USB Network Adapter Troubleshooting Disconnect From Internet After Computer Idle For Period of Time is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

What is NOT acceptable is being unable to find solutions or workarounds for your problems. More specifically, what is not acceptable is being told that rebooting is a fix, that running in safe mode is a fix, or that disabling your firewall and security software is a fix. If those things are causing a problem, then we need to know WHY and then either adjust them, or the OS so that we can run secure computers. It would be one thing if Microsoft was telling you to disable third-party security software, after all, they can’t fix everyone else’s problems too, but when they are telling you to turn off the Windows Firewall or Security Essentials, that is not acceptable.

Wireless Network Disconnect Problem

While I have thought I have solved the Windows wireless networking issues both Windows XP Wireless Connection Randomly Dropping and Windows 7 Wireless Connection Problems, these issue keep rearing their ugly heads. The odd thing is that I have over time indeed purchased and installed new hardware. I have a new netbook for writing, I have a new PC upstairs (in the same room as the wireless router), and I even have a new wireless router (Baby Smashed!). Still I experience from time to time the dreaded random wireless networking disconnection in Windows 7.

Just to be clear, I have already done all of the standard troubleshooting, including updating all drivers, bios, and firmware. In addition, my wireless network DOES WORK. It connects without fail every time I boot my PC. I can go entire days, and sometimes even several days without a single hiccup. Other times, it seems that I lose my Windows 7 wireless network every 10 or 15 minutes.

Trying to nail down the circumstances under which the wireless connection drop is kind of difficult because I multitask extensively and let the computer do many things in the background. After all, that is the whole point of computers, letting them take care of tasks that so that we can focus our energies and resources on other things. However, over time, it seems that the there are three common scenarios that seem to proceed wireless network problems. Unfortunately, none of these 3 circumstances results in wireless trouble every time. In addition, there are times when the wireless connectivity drops when none of these three events is taking place. Nonetheless, to get anywhere, you have to start somewhere.

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Windows 7 Wireless Network Drops – Common Scenarios

Wireless Network Drop Situation #1: During large (and multiple) file downloads via Bittorrent, Rapidshare downloads, corporate server downloads, VPN downloads, etc. particularly when downloading multiple files at once. Possible causes include network overload, too many connections (old XP number of connections limit issue), too many programs trying to use the network too fast, and Windows 7 inability to keep up or manage the resource.

Wireless Networking Disconnected Scenario #2: Returning to the PC after several minutes or longer. This one is more frequent when downloads have been left running while the computer is not being used, however, it occurs frequently enough on its own to not be discounted. Possible causes include power savings settings, timeouts, security settings trying to lock things down, etc. I have disabled Windows 7 ability to turn off devices such as USB ports in order to save power.

Windows 7 Wireless Network Disconnect Scenario #3: Often the network seems to drop late at night when I am wrapping up my day by reading Facebook and playing some of the Flash-based games on Facebook. I often use Google Chrome to read Facebook and hence to play the games on Facebook. I am investigating whether a similar issue occurs while using Mozilla Firefox instead. However, the intermittent nature of the problem makes it difficult to determine if there is no problem when using Firefox, or if there just has been no problem using Firefox YET.

New Computer Problem – Windows Live Writer Crashing and Throwing Exceptions Whenever Trying to Link or use Tools Options Menu. I’ll let you know if I get this one fixed too

Windows 7 Wireless Network Random Disconnects Fixed Yet? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Update: It seems (so far) that scripting a stop and start of the Spooler service can eliminate the need to turn the printer off and on. At least as long as you don’t print too much during the automatic scheduled task interval. – Will add new post when I have more data to go on. Grab the Best Hubris RSS Feed to read it right away.

HP printers have been solid workhorses for some time. Many IT pros swear by HP printers and won’t buy anything else. As Microsoft Windows 7 becomes more commonly installed and the default operating system installed on most new computers, upgrading old HP printer drivers to Windows 7 is more important.

Unfortunately, HP has decided to abandon a large group of HP printer owners. Numerous HP printers, particularly inexpensive “low-end” models have been assigned by HP to “Category 6″. Category 6 printers will not be supported under Windows 7, which means that Hewlett Packard will not be offering new print drivers for those models of LaserJet, InkJet, and All-in-One printers.

Of course, HP is doing its best to spin the situation by pointing out how many other printer drivers it is offering, and offering its more gullible customers the chance to participate in a special HP printer upgrade program for owners of obsolete printers. Too bad that the so-called special pricing upgrades offered by HP don’t compete with the best deals that a savvy consumer can find on the Internet or by watching the sales ads in the Sunday newspaper.

No Windows 7 Drivers for HP Printers 1012 and More

Obviously, the decision to not provide Windows 7 drivers to loyal HP customers is motivated by money. Although possibly a good financial move in the short-term, the lasting damage to HP’s reputation among customers, end-users, and technology professionals may well prove to be a much bigger expense than simply coding a few printer drivers. All of which raises the question,

“Why is HP not making Windows 7 print drivers for the HP 1012 and other printers?”

The full-answer lies within the walls of HP, but some information can be extrapolated.

First, HP fell victim to the business strategy of trying to bundle HP printing software with its printer drivers under Windows XP. These printing bundles provided little to no value and came with enormous overhead. Often, these printer bundles came with numerous printing utilities that customers never used and the bloated the size and complexity of updates from HP. Professional systems administrators and businesses stripped out the extra software immediately and used just the plain driver, while less savvy end-users ended up installing the software, but never using it.

However, since the software had been offered by HP and touted as improving the printing experience, HP was obligated to support and update not just the printer drivers, but the software bundles as well. This proved to be an added expense with no value because most people did not see any benefit from the utilities they were duped into downloading.

The extra HP software allowed HP engineers to code to their own internal standard instead of being confined to the actual computing standards being followed all over the world. For example, the HP Laser Jet 1012 print driver claims to support either PCL5 or PCL6, although the driver output from both modes does not conform to PCL standards. It is this bad business decision that is forcing HP to abandon so many of its good customers by not updating the drivers.

In order to fully support lower-end HP LaserJet printers that got these half-standards drivers, HP would have to fully recode the whole driver in order to generate the proper output to the printer hardware from inside Windows 7. The existing hooks and printer driver components supplied inside of Windows 7 by Microsoft as part of the operating system would not be usable because they only generate true standardized PCL output streams. The HP LaserJet 1010 series would not be expecting pure PCL commands and would produce errors.

Unsupported Personality PCL LaserJet 1012 Error Message

Many users have tried to continue using their LaserJet printers in Windows 7 by using another printer driver. Most theorize that a “close” model number would provide good enough printer driver support for their specific HP LaserJet model printer. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, since the true determining factor of whether or not the driver will function properly is whether or not the printer shares the same kind of pseudo-PCL code as the alternate driver.

For example, most LaserJet 1012 owners first try using the LaserJet 1015 driver. While some users report success, most find that they get errors right away, and most other begin to notice more and more errors as they try and use the wrong driver.

Fortunately, the LaserJet 3055 printer driver for Windows 7 appears to be able to allow the LaserJet 1012 printer to run under Windows 7. However, many users note that even that will eventually fail with a Unsupported Personality: PCL error message being printed on the page. Some users can clear the message by deleting the print job and power cycling the printer.

As it turns out, the error is caused by a mismatch in how the LaserJet printers implemented the PCL standard. The LaserJet 1012 printer outputs additional unsupported data with every print job. Eventually, all of the “extra” data fills up the buffers and the printer stops working. Additionally, the LaserJet 1012 uses a hacked printing methodology that prints everything as Raster-graphics and not vectorized. The LaserJet 3055 driver by default is set to vectorized which causes more serious errors.

Fortunately, users of LaserJet 1012s can use the 3055 driver successfully if the printer properties are changed to raster-graphics from vectorized and the printer is powered off every so often. A good trick for personal users of LaserJet 1012s is to attach them to a power strip used to shut down the computer on weekends or overnight which will cause the printer to power-cycle on a regular basis. Users with higher-end powerstrips like the APC Power-Saving Surge Protector can plug the printer into one of the managed outlets which will cut power to the device whenever the computer is turned off.

HP LaserJet 1012 Printer Drivers for Windows 7 is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

I had hoped this crap would be fixed in Windows 7, but apparently the long suffering Microsoft blunder known officially as NetBIOS / NetBEUI, and as NetKablooey by any experienced systems administrator or network administrator, just won’t die. Although Windows 7 itself doesn’t necessarily use NetBIOS anymore (a long ago abandoned local area network protocol, that among other things, would not scale to large networks) it still has it built in, presumably to handle the error-prone NetBEUI connections still out there on Windows XP machines all over the world.

If you have a wireless network that randomly drops connections even though your wireless adapter connects fine to the wireless network and Windows 7 says that nothing is wrong, and may even still show as connected based on the icon in your system tray, chances are you are being knocked off the wireless network by browser elections from the old NetBIOS network protocol. Basically, browser elections unleash a flurry of broadcast packets out onto the network, that for some reason are not handled properly and Windows 7 starts shutting down services to fix it.

Unfortunately, it seems that no one seems to know that this happens a lot and you will see post after post in wireless network troubleshooting forums or wireless help forums about computers that work just fine with the wireless network most of the time, but sometimes just drop the connection for no reason. The self-proclaimed experts in these forums answer with all of the same drivel that they do for any wireless connection problem: update your drivers, check your SSID, check your security settings, and then, when none of their worthless suggestions work, then they will tell you to blame your microwave, or buy a new wireless adapter or wireless router. They’ll even helpfully through in a brand name suggestion that has, “worked well for me in the past.” – WHATEVER!

Computer Browser Error Causes Wireless Network Connectivity Problem

Here is what is really happening. You can prove it with your computer’s own system event logs. (The logs are under Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> System)

Depending upon how long it has been since your computer dropped its wireless connection and you look in the Event Viewer, these events may be right up at the top, or you may have to scroll down a bit to find them.

The tale tell sign of Browser Elections from NetBIOS breaking wireless network connections is a pattern of 3 system events that all occur with the same time stamp. The easiest way to find them is to look for the Source of BROWSER. That will be the first of the three events. The other two events will be the TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service was successfully sent a stop control, followed by The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service has been stopped.

The next events may vary depending upon how your computer is set up, but will include one indicating that the TCP/IP NetBIOS has successfully started. This is why your Windows 7 system does not know that it has lost wireless connectivity. It THINKS the link is still working and will not change the system tray icon to show a disconnected network because TCP/IP (which is what it is actually using for networking) is working normally.

Unfortunately, another service gets knocked offline during this cascade of system events that does not get restarted. The WinHTTP Proxy Auto-Discovery Service, which should be completely unnecessary for a system using legitimate networking standards, enters the stopped state and does not restart.

This prevents your computer, not from networking and sending packets, but rather it prevents your system of having any idea what to do with that traffic. The stink of this whole thing is that if Windows 7 wireless networking worked well enough without all of these “helper” services, none of this would be a problem for Internet connections because the DNS Servers would still be running. But, Windows 7 wireless configuration is too dumb to use DNS Servers for Internet traffic, because it worries more about local area network traffic. Without one of the LAN services there to tell Windows to send those packets to the Internet and use the real networking protocols standards, it flails about like a helpless child.

Unfortunately, the next event is the one that gets the WARNING icon and label and it says that there is a DNS problem. Oh, that isn’t a Windows issue, is it? I guess you’ll need to go waste hours of your time seeing if there is a DNS error. Even worse, if you re-enter your DNS settings or otherwise change the configuration of your wireless adapter enough to cause a full network subsystem restart the problem will go away…until the next time, because the problem was not with the DNS configuration in the first place.

Troubleshooting Windows 7 Wireless Network Connection Errors

Here is where it really starts to suck.

If you know anything about computers or networking, you will try to troubleshoot wireless connections by disconnect and reconnect to the wireless network as a way to reset the connection. That won’t work, however, because connecting and disconnecting don’t check the status of the WinHTTP Proxy service.

Running the Windows 7 troubleshooter MIGHT work, if the system decides there is enough of a problem to completely restart the networking subsystem, in which case the WinHTTP Proxy Service gets sent a restart command. While this does restart the service, and restore a functioning wireless network, it does not take any notice of the fact that the system was stopped in the first place, or what caused it to crash originally, so nothing really gets fixed.

What can you do to permanently fix these wireless connection errors?

Go into Services (in Administrator Tools) and set Computer Browser to Disabled (you have to stop it first.) Then, this idiotic vestige of Microsoft blunders past won’t try and force elections to make itself the Master Browser, and thus won’t knock itself off of the wireless network. The only downside to this solution is if your network design sucks enough, or if you have old Windows XP computers sharing files and folders on your home network, you might not be able to connect to those computers by name.

You can solve this problem by using LMHOST files or other means of name resolution.

Theoretically, if there were only Windows 7 computers on your wireless network there would be no issue, with name resolution, but, you might STILL get knocked off the network because Windows 7 refuses to assume that there are no old and busted NetBIOS computers on your network until proven otherwise, which means every time you turn on a computer, or some invisible timer goes off, some computer will try and force a browser election and break the wireless connection again.

Update: Disabling the browser service is not enough. Computers can continue to be knocked off the wireless network by responding to the browser elections of other computers, it seems.

Additionally, other services besides WinHTTP Proxy may be disrupted and cause subsequent wireless networking problems. Users should go into Services Manager and sort by startup type. Then, scan for any Automatic processes that are no longer running and restart those as well.

Wireless Networking Drops Connection Windows 7 Troubleshooting is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Today’s drama is brought to you by an older, but not ancient external hard drive called the SmartDisk Firelite external hard drive firewire version. It’s just a 20 GB portable drive, but it works just fine, can get its power from the firewire port, and holds more than the average USB keydrive; plus, it copies files faster.

As expected, Windows 7 detected the new firewire disk when I plugged it in and installed a generic driver for it. It mounted the volume, and gave it a drive letter. This is all great, and frankly shows just how good Windows 7 is as a PC operating system.

I started copying over the files that I wanted to have on the Firewire drive. Everything was going just fine. New folders and files were appearing, and everything was working great. Then, all of the sudden, the Firelite disk drive powers down in the middle of the copy. Teracopy keeps trying for a minute, but eventually fails.

A look inside of Event Viewer -> System shows an Event 25 Error Source sbp2port. The description of the error says that:

The driver has detected a device with old or out-of-date firmware.  The device will not be used.

What the–?

The device was working just fine, and I was happy with it, so don’t disable it just because you don’t like it’s firmware.

Technically, this one isn’t on Microsoft or Windows 7, because this particular portable external HDD is not using the most up to date specification, and technically, that makes it not compatible with Windows 7.

But, it was WORKING! Just leave it alone. Don’t randomly try and detect stuff to disable. If it isn’t causing any errors (it wasn’t) then just leave it alone. Don’t even examine it. You don’t need to know what it is or what it is doing if I am using it without causing system problems.

The bummer is that searching for an answer took forever. The almost always useless "Event Log Online Help" had no information. It almost never does except for the most common no brainer problems that usually get solved before anyone even looks in the Event Viewer. Microsoft’s Windows 7 Help Center was no help either, and it appears that SmartDisk has gone under / been bought out by Verbatim, who have no driver updates past Windows XP for the device, let alone a firmware upgrade.

Fortunately I eventually stumbled upon a related thread about Windows 7 Firewire problems on the IT Pro forums which noted that if you can "update" the IEEE 1397 Bus Host Controller driver from the 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller driver to the 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) driver if you go into Device Manger and choose to manually update the driver and then select one manually on your computer as opposed to trying any of the "Automatically Search" options which just go out and try and update the default driver.

So far, this has worked like a champ. Apparently the legacy driver either doesn’t care that the firmware is out-of-date, or maybe it doesn’t even check. Either way, my firewire hard drive works just fine now without some nosy system process coming along and deciding it is too old to keep working correctly on my computer.

Event 25 sbp2port Detected Old or Out-Of-Date Firmware External Hard Drive Firewire FireLite Portable HDD is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC