Hardware

You did not say what O/S you are using, but if you go into safe mode you can remove the printer. With 95/98 ether f8 or ctrl hold the key down after the splash screen. ctrl also works with 2000 and xp. Select safe mode. Look at the start, programs and the printer to see if there is an uninstall. Down load tweak for the O/S you are using.

Start with HP support pages, and see if there is an article or utility for cleaning up a bad install of the printer.

If not, you can start buy manually deleteing the folders for the printer driver and software.

Then CAREFULLY look in the Windows folders for files that are specific to that printer.
Most of the files will have the same date, or the date you installed the printer.

Next, clean out any links in the system files.
Autoexec.bat, config.sys, system.ini, win.ini

Finally, you need to clean out any keys for the printer in the registry.
CAUTION, backup the registry before proceeding, and use extreeme caution.
Changing or DELETING the wrong key can stop your computer from booting into Windows.

If manually editing the registry is not what you want to do, there are some utilities that can do this for you.
I have had good luck with both Norton WinDoctor, and VCom Fix-It.

Finally, when you re-install the printer, SHUT DOWN ALL running programs!!!
Close all programs with Icons in the system tray.
Use task manager (Alt-Ctrl-Del) to find other running programs and close them also.

Chas

Couple good answers so far. Here's another, most HP driver files start with HP, so if you have no other hp peripherals and you don't have an HP machine, delete the printer from printer setup, (right click and delete.) I like to hop around in dos, use editors (edit command) and edit the win.ini and system.ini remove all traces of hp whatever, edit the registry searching for HP and remove all sources there, and as I said before walk through the windows and windows sub directories erasing hp*.*.Again if you have other devices or an hp machine do not do this! It also would be important to back up the registry,win.ini,system.ini before editing them!
That way you can always go back to where you are.
There is an advantage to erasing within the mycomputer that the files will be kept in your recycle bin if there's enough space available and you could restore from there as well. A little safer than just erasing at will. It all depends on how comfortable you are reloading software if it has ties to HP. I've erased things this way quite often especially when uninstalls aren't provided, you do need to be a little cautious if for any reason you beleive the file is used for something else. But like I said above if you have no other HP devices I guess I should include HP software!!!, like there photo software and the like, erase away. Good Luck!

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