Configuring Laserjet 4050 Windows 7

**Ray_Willis** · 04-01-2015

My wife bought a surplus HP Laserjet 4050 printer from her employer. It has an XCD XJet 3000 EIO card. I have an ethernet connection to my router and all my mobile devices (Android and Apple) can print to it. However, I've not been successful in configuring it so that my Windows 7 Professional desktop can find it and connect. If someone can provide or direct me to the configuration information I need I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

**rthonpm** · 04-01-2015

For that old of a machine, you'll need to use HP's universal driver from their website, then just add the device like any other network printer.

Some versions of the Universal Driver (I avoid it like the plague, but in this case it's your only option) will also do the install for you so you'll just need to know the IP of the device and it should work.

**Ray_Willis** · 04-01-2015

Thanks. I'll look for the universal driver.

**Ray_Willis** · 04-02-2015

Success! I appreciate the help.

**tech28** · 04-02-2015

Unfortunately, a lot of times when you disconnect or shut off the power to the printer(or computer), you will loose connection and will have re install it all over again. Seen this happen many times.

**rthonpm** · 04-02-2015

Originally Posted by tech28

Unfortunately, a lot of times when you disconnect or shut off the power to the printer(or computer), you will loose connection and will have re install it all over again. Seen this happen many times.

Only if the printer is set to DHCP: give the printer a static IP outside of the range of IP's that your router supplies (you can find this in its web interface) then you don't need to worry about the address ever changing unless you do it.

Something you always need to find on the network, like a printer, or a server, should always have a static IP.

**Ray_Willis** · 04-02-2015

Originally Posted by rthonpm

Only if the printer is set to DHCP: give the printer a static IP outside of the range of IP's that your router supplies (you can find this in its web interface) then you don't need to worry about the address ever changing unless you do it.

Something you always need to find on the network, like a printer, or a server, should always have a static IP.

Thanks. I do have it set up with a static IP. My post yesterday about success was premature. I had only heard it print when I selected to print a test page, so assumed all was well. Later, when I actually looked at the page, I realized it was an error message. After work today I re-downloaded print drivers and went through the add printer process again. Now it is actually printing what I expect. However, the IP I assigned is within the range of IPs the router supplies, but at the upper end. I'm not that familiar with networking so thought I would have to choose one within the range. I'm hoping that by specifying one toward the upper end of the range I won't run into issues as it was difficult enough to get this set up and working in the first place.

Thanks for the help!

**rthonpm** · 04-03-2015

So long as you have no chance of getting enough devices on your network to cause an IP conflict you should be alright. For myself, and customers, I've used a scheme of using specific blocks for static IP's: anything with the last octet between 2-9 is an infrastructure device or server (wireless repeater, DHCP server, domain controller, etc); 10-19 is a printer or MFP; 20-29 non-infrastructure servers (file/print, application, etc); the rest of the block outside of DHCP then becomes open for any other kind of customer specific need (Linux hosts, other resources, overflow from one of the other groups, virtual machines, etc).

Since I have to deal with so many different networks, it helps me keep a good idea of just where the issue may lie from knowing the IP.

**Ray_Willis** · 04-03-2015

Sounds well thought out.

**stopeon** · 04-03-2015

Originally Posted by Ray_Willis

My wife bought a surplus HP Laserjet 4050 printer from her employer. It has an XCD XJet 3000 EIO card. I have an ethernet connection to my router and all my mobile devices (Android and Apple) can print to it. However, I've not been successful in configuring it so that my Windows 7 Professional desktop can find it and connect. If someone can provide or direct me to the configuration information I need I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

Just recently I used HP's universal driver to setup a LaserJet 2200 I still had kicking around. I'm curious, though, what did you use for the Android? HP's apps seemed to stop at my wireless MFP, and ignore the wired printer.