Like many IT Pros and professionals who have a home office, I have a multifunction printer/fax/scanner/copier. The device works great for the most part, but since loading Windows 7, I have had to use the scanning/copying functions as a standalone device. That is until now!

I have my HP OfficeJet 6310 device attached to the network. Using the installation CD utilities from HP, I never was able to get the printer software to discover the printer and install the software correctly.

Although I could still use the printer, the installation software would not discover it correctly, which meant that I couldn’t configure the printer features the way I wanted to. Finally, I decided to try the HP network diagnostic utility that is on the drivers and downloads page for this device.

Once the network diagnostic utility is downloaded, you must configure its compatibility settings to have it run as Windows Vista SP1 and select to run this as an administrator.

The network diagnostic utility should discover the printer just fine. The result of the network scan is displayed in Figure A.

Figure A

The utility now recognizes my printer, but I also had to configure the installation software to run as Windows Vista SP1 and run as administrator. Success!

Now my system properly recognizes my multifunction device and all features work as expected over the network. Do you have any troubleshooting issues with Windows 7 RTM: compatibility, devices, drivers, etc.? Let me know.