TO-Tech Blog

I hope this is the final HP PhotoSmart C6250 horror story I post here

The printer hardware itself is fine although it is (1) extremely noisy during startup and (2) locks the PC it is connected to if it is on during boot up. However, I had to remove all the printer’s applications software from a Windows XP networked PC this past weekend after suffering through weeks of slowness and occasional system freezing. The problem was that HP’s application monitoring software would go into some kind of endless loop if the printer was not turned on and, therefore, undetectable. Since HP’s software had been unable to actually work with the networked printer for the past two weeks anyway, I didn’t see much point in debugging it further. The XP PC runs much much faster now and has not locked up since removing the HP software this past weekend.

Just a note to myself. I don’t use any of the apps on the list. But, you can never tell…

Information about programs that are known to experience a loss of functionality when they run on a Windows Vista Service Pack 1-based computer

I bought an HP PhotoSmart C6250 multifunction (print, scan, copy) printer just before the holiday season to print the annual family newsletter (multiple pages, lots of photos). The printer did the job but has been an endless source of frustration.

The first problem is that it locks up my Windows Vista PC if the printer is turned on before the PC has completed booting. This is NOT a Vista problem. It locks up right at the initial BIOS screen. This PC has worked fine with two other USB printers. So, the printer ports should be fine.

The next problem is that Windows Vista insists that I have a new printer every time I boot and reinstalls the drivers each time. This is maddening.

Vista seems to lose track of the printer every now and then and the print jobs stalls in the queue without letting me know there is a problem.

HP’s scanning software sometimes saves scanned photos to My Scans. Other times in stores it to a folder under it created under that folder (e.g., 2008-02 (Feb)). Sometimes it brings up the HP browsing software after a scan. Other times it brings up Windows Explorer.

Next, printing over the network (the C6250 is LAN enabled) from a Windows XP PC worked for a few days and then could not find the printer after that even after I manually entered the printer’s IP address.

Finally, HP updated C6250’s driver but never renamed it. Both the old driver and the one released in January 2008 are named PS_AIO_02_Network_ENU.exe. However, the two files have completed different file sizes. And, of course, the earlier one was released prior to January 2008.

The first HP printer I ever bought for myself was the HP ThinkJet released in 1984. I think I bought mine sometime in 1985. So, I’ve bought a series of HP printer for over 20 years now and have been pretty happy with them up until Vista was released, their inability to provide printers for old, and now, apparently even new printers.

So, so long HP! My next printer will probably be a Canon.

I noticed this while beta-testing Windows Vista but never did anything about it: Windows Vista doesn’t let you enable the Administrator account from a simple GUI the way Windows XP does.

Enable Vista’s hidden administrator, and password-protect its XP equivalent

The trick is to run the CMD command line window as Administrator (right click on the item in the Start menu), then use the net command as the CNET article describes. Every Windows user should have a separate standby account to use in case your main account is messed up somehow.

Windows Vista is just too big and slow to run comfortably in a Virtual Machine (VM) unless you have a really fast PC with a really fast hard drive. I’ve found running Vista as a VM on a notebook with a hard drive less than 7200 rpm (which is the norm for desktops) is just a bad idea. It doesn’t matter if you have a reasonably decent amount of RAM (2GB on the host) and a fast processor (Core 2 Duo). I’ve even found Vista slow installed as a VM on a big server (10GB RAM, dual dual-core processors with 10000 rpm RAID-5 drives). The Windows Server 2008 (full GUI, not the Core version) seems to run reasonably well as a VM. But, I will reserve judgement on it until I get the RTM release and install it under both Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

If you are looking for a relatively resource friendly version of Windows to run as VM on a relatively slow host PC, take a look at Windows Server 2003 R2. I’m running it on an old PC: Athlon 64 3200+ (2.2GHz) with 2GB RAM. I gave Windows Server 2003 R2 512MB RAM and it is running fast enough for me to feel comfortable when using it. I’ve run it with 384MB RAM (if you are on a PC with less than 2GB physical RAM) and it felt decent in that reduced configuration too. The base Windows Server feels lighter and faster than either XP or Vista in a virtualized environment. I may even use it as a virtual desktop PC instead of XP or Vista going forward. Since Windows Server 2003 R2 should remain under standard support until February 2010 (two years after Server 2008 debuts), it should be a reasonably secure Windows test environment for at least the next two years.