I have recently installed a used HP PSC 500 Printer-Scanner-Copier to
my 550mhz machine running XP-Profess.  It refuses to scan.

I have tried:

1:  Using the original HP install disk - which then states it does not
support
    Windows 2000 products.

2:  Put in my XP-Pro disk hoping it would find the 2000 drivers in the
control
    panel add hardware etc wizard - failure.

3:  Went online to an i=unknown source to download a supposedly win-2K
compliant
    version for this scanner printer, ran the *.EXE file without
scanning it for
    viruses and trojans (I like to live dangerously, I drive a Geo
Metro on the
    Interstate too), again nothing.

When the SCAN button is hit, it announces "cannot connect to PC", YET,
XP has
found the new hardware when I first booted up, and in the control
panel it anounces that the "device is working fine", just spiffy. 
Except it won't work.

I'm using the original cable which should still be in good shape
cannecting to the back of the printer/scanner/headache-maker and to
the LPT-1 printer port where my EPSON was parked earlier.

I can see the HP PSC500 in the device manager.  It says its working
fine, but the printer says it can't find the PC.  Go figure.....

I've been fighting PC's since 1983, all the way back to the IBM 8088
and its single sided 5" floppy bendable disk...so this isn't anything
new to me.

At this point, I figure if your plug and pray anything up to a box,
and it WORKS, send your prayers to whomever - you are a lucky soul. 
If it doesn't work, and you spend hours trying to find updated
drivers, and trying to install 8 bit, 16bit, 32 bit, and if you have
the $$, 64 bit cards into expension slots and they work the first
time, you rolled out of bed on the right side.

Mike
MCSA
soon MCSE
and NET+
and CIW-Security+
and maybe a Novell degree, but who's using that netwaste anyway, ever
since they tossed out their KERNEL in favor of Linux, they basically
gave away their identity as a network operating system, and relegated
themselves to just an app layer over a Linux kernel.

send email replies not to pts-express but to:
mailto: florida_express2003@yahoo.com

PTS-EXPRESS wrote:
> I have recently installed a used HP PSC 500 Printer-Scanner-Copier to
> my 550mhz machine running XP-Profess.  It refuses to scan.

Note: This is not a HP support newsgroup, this group is for discussing
HP-UX (HP's Unix product). But... since searching www.hp.com took
me all of 15 seconds...

> 
> I have tried:
> 
> 1:  Using the original HP install disk - which then states it does not
> support
>     Windows 2000 products.

Right. XP is supposed to support the PSC 500 out-of-the box. No
need to use the disc.

> 
> 2:  Put in my XP-Pro disk hoping it would find the 2000 drivers in the
> control
>     panel add hardware etc wizard - failure.

Since you mention that "XP has found the new hardware when I first
booted up"... did you do this to try to re-install *after* XP
installed the support the first time via the PnP installer?

> 
> 3:  Went online to an i=unknown source to download a supposedly win-2K
> compliant
>     version for this scanner printer, ran the *.EXE file without
> scanning it for
>     viruses and trojans (I like to live dangerously, I drive a Geo
> Metro on the
>     Interstate too), again nothing.

Oh heavens... well, unless that was microsoft.com -- I would get that
off my machine quickly.

Anywho --

XP is supposed to support this puppy with drivers that come with it.
There's a whole URL on trouble shooting things if it doesn't work
right on first pass -- I think it simpler to paste the URL that
to restate it here... After skimming it -- my gut says to check
that your parallel port is configured to ECP mode (instead of EPP)
in the BIOS when you reboot after stripping out whatever drivers
that mystery .EXE gave you.

Read:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&lang=en&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=bpu01853

There's also:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lang=en&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=bpu01862

for more general XP All-in-One issues (the first one is PSC 500
specific, so I'd start there).

> 
> When the SCAN button is hit, it announces "cannot connect to PC", YET,
> XP has
> found the new hardware when I first booted up, and in the control
> panel it anounces that the "device is working fine", just spiffy. 
> Except it won't work.
> 

Don
-- 
kernel, n:
A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval traditions
of sorcery and black art.