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After upgrading to 10.6 my printer became unavailable to print to. It behaved as if the driver crashed (when I chose to add the printer over Bonjour) and was removed by the OS. Reinstalling the drivers from HP actually worked out pretty well, but as you can see, four sets of options are now disabled for me:

Paper, Color, Options, and Duplex are not selectable

This means I cannot print in greyscale, and I cannot choose to print from manual feed or set the paper type to a label or photo-paper.

The message I get when I choose Paper is:

Paper option disabled

The bundle "Paper" couldn't be loaded because it doesn't contain a version for the current architecture.

If anyone knows a workaround for this, or spots updated drivers from HP, I'd like to know. The driver version reports itself to be 1.3.

As the printer is discontinued, and clearly the drivers are some of the few which were written by ZenoGraphics, all HP can do is make it clear via their mirthful businesslike royalty-free clip-art that they think the joke's on me:

Support pages smile knowingly at your travails

Update: The latest drivers on 10.6.6 are versioned 1.3.0.261 and move these features around (Duplex seems hidden, but I see greyscale under printer features and then color options. Also the paper choice is there too. So that's kind of a fix. This driver came in the Driver Update 2.4.1 on June 30 2010. That was some wait.

Update: If anyone landing on this page finds they cannot print over the network, but that they can print over USB, it's because of a change in Rendevous aka Bonjour aka Zeroconf aka mDNS. This is not my issue at all. But I have an answer to those people's problem. Update the printer to the latest firmware update from the support site (you must run the update with a Windows PC if you want a network update, other wise use the update with USB on a Mac). The Bonjour implementation on the printer was very buggy for the Mac (though not the PC, possibly endianness differences in some part of the communication?)

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6 Answers 6

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Apple just released updated Snow Leopard printer drivers for HP printers on Friday (9/11/2009). You can install them through Apple Software Update.

If that doesn't work, you may try the steps in this Super User post.

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  • Thank you, but my printer is conspicuously absent from the list of updated drivers (most of which are v5.4.0). And the super user post is not applicable, because the driver is now installed (v1.3), but doesn't support all the features it did under 10.5.
    – dlamblin
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 23:13
  • The June 30 2010 Driver Update 2.4.1 for 10.6 did fix this.
    – dlamblin
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 8:56
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Did you see OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Printer Driver Incompatibility List on the HP forums?

Someone claims:

Just installed new Snow Leopard HP drivers today from Apples software update site.. Color Laserjet 2600n will work using usb cable but still refuses to connect over network. It's got to be an issue with the JetDirect hardware in the printer..

I don't know about that, but another hint: ensure any firewall allows for using the network printing. (This, for example, is a requirement to install the Canon iP4000R.)

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  • Actually this is not my issue at all. But I have an answer to those people's problem. Update the printer to the latest firmware update (but you must run the update with a Windows PC). The Bonjour/Zeroconf implementation was very buggy for the mac (though not the PC, possibly endianness?)
    – dlamblin
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 7:43
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I had a similar problem with a Canon printer. I had to Get Info on the application (Preview in my case) and check Open in 32-bit mode.

Some applications don't seem to need this adjustment (32-bit only I assume) and others I noticed don't offer the option.

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  • Thanks. I sort of think of printing as a cross-application thing. If I had to run all my applications in 32-bit mode just for the printer driver to work, then there's still something wrong with the printer driver.
    – dlamblin
    Commented Mar 10, 2011 at 8:39
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use iTunes9, print, there it is possible to choose the printer-options. Why doesn't work with other programms?

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    Probably iTunes9 runs in 32bit mode and thus the bundles there will load, while in 64bit apps the bundles will not load; I haven't confirmed that the options work in iTunes9 for me though.
    – dlamblin
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 7:36
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Using the 1.3 HP drivers that work with Tiger/Leopard, I can get the disabled options to work again by making sure the offending application opens in 32-bit mode. E.g. Preview - find the icon in the Applications folder, Get Info on it, then check Open in 32-bit mode. Presumably the old drivers don't work with 64-bit apps.

Choosing Draft Mode in Options sometimes makes the printer choke on a Page is too complex error. I leave it at 2400dpi and it usually works.

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The Driver Update 2.4.1 released on June 30th 2010 did fix this, though they moved the options around under "printer features" and may have removed duplex (my printer doesn't feature duplex, so maybe that's added detection). The driver version is now 1.3.0.261.

I also hear that either 10.6.6 or Lion is going with downloading drivers on demand to remove the 100s of megabytes used just for storing drivers to devices you don't have.

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