HP PhotoSmart C6250: The Last HP Printer I Will Ever Buy
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.
February 22nd, 2008 - 20:02
We have two of these printers, and we bought them at christmas time also. Worked with Windows 2000/XP Home/XP Pro etc etc. Then my sisters laptop, a dell tried to print to it. After installing the drivers, it could not find it on the network ( i.e. all the other machines could but the Vista Box ). So we plugged it in directly. ( Same problem as you! Has to find the printer every time for boot. ) so, I backed up her machine, installed Windows XP Pro. Re-installed the drivers. Now everyone is happy, and everyone can print. After using HP printers for … 25+ years, and PCs since DOS 1.1, I think that the Vista driver is not very well done, and that Vista itself is not well done. A neibour of my fathers had a computer, looked dead to me, so He bought a new computer with Vista! He still cannot get his C6250 to scan. I dont think it will ever work. The machine, after a month, started this weird grinding noise ( Power suplly fan! ), He took it back, and got the SAME computer with Windows XP. He has had no problems. He can scan, and print, and copy.
The best part? Printer Carts at Costco, $56.99 for the TINYEST CARTRIDGE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Thought I was going to have to use a magnifying glass to see it. Cant hold that much ink.
4inkjets.com => 13 peice cartridge set, 3 blacks, 2 sets of color $60.
Same tiny carts. Itty bitty cartidge, but for 65% less.
February 28th, 2008 - 14:35
I bought a new C7280 that uses the same driver. I installed it from the CD and it locked my computer (quad-core Intel, all four processor cores pegged at 100% utilization.) I traced the problem as you did to a service that the driver installs. I uninstalled the software and downloaded it from the website (prior to the 1-1-08 version) and it gave me the same problem as the CD one. I tried tech support and was EXTREMELY frustrated by that awful experience. I do like the hardware and the printer works well using the basic driver, but I miss the ability to scan images to my computer and other features that the full package allows. I am very hesitant about trying their new driver because at 195,144KB, it seems excessively bloated. I was hoping someone would tell me that they fixed the lock-up problem; I have not found that yet. I will never buy another HP printer again.
September 15th, 2008 - 12:35
I am the IT person at a large office. Some of the computers I work on are laptops and some of them have Vista. The printer reinstalls every time you reboot on the VISTA machines only. I think it is a bug in vista!
January 5th, 2009 - 15:01
I have this printer running on a network, both wired and wireless using a mixture of Vista, XP and Mac OSX machines and its never failed once.
January 7th, 2009 - 06:45
I bought one of these in the fall of 2008 specifically to update to a network attached printer. I’m running XP Pro and while it’s constantly saying it can’t find the printer, then it’s attached – never had a problem with it printing.
I see HP has updates for the drivers now. Will try it.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3308554
Only other problem is it seems to have more paper jams than my older printers and there’s very limited methods to open up this printer to correct.
May 21st, 2009 - 16:11
I have a c6250 printer connected via USB to a desktop computer running XP. I have a laptop running vista and was able to print wirelessly to the printer with the desktop running. I inadvertently unplugged the printer the other day. Now I can’t print from my laptop. I reinstalled the printer drivers on both machines, still with no luck. HP support was useless. This happened one other time and luckily I had and intelligent tech on HP’s free chat that walked me through the issue and got me going. It was an issue of the IP addresses on the two computers. I’m lost, can any one steer me in the right direction.
thanks,
Chris
November 15th, 2009 - 04:50
I am running a HP F4180 on a Vista machine. Started about 6 months after I bought the computer. Maddening, everyday, have to go in and delete the previous days install to make printer work. How do I fix this!?
June 30th, 2011 - 17:26
I have not had trouble with printing documents from the computer, but have had real issues with using the menu to print photos. I bought 2 boxes of HP Premium Photo Paper, 4×6 with tabs, and no matter what direction I put the paper in, it insists on printing the picture over the tab area. I have tried different settings. First issue was a year ago; I simply stopped using it for photos (and about everything else; I have a laser printer that is not HP), but today I decided to again with different settings. Same problem. Maybe bad batch of paper, with back of paper printed up-side down; who knows. Out of warranty; no support. Will not buy HP paper or printer again. I will keep the printer until it breaks, but I will not use HP photo paper in it. I don’t have issues with photo paper that is not “Auto Sense” nonsense.