> On Jan 26, 2016, at 10:00 AM, Bob Whiton <m...@rswhiton.com> wrote: > > Hi All - > > I recently made the mistake of letting Software Update nag me into installing > new printer drivers, and now I’m paying for it. Here’s the set up: Aluminum > iMac running OS 10.9.5, downloaded and installed the HP Printer Software > Update 3.1. Now my Deskjet printer misaligns photos and borders. Spent a > week on the HP support forum, uninstalled/reinstalled printer driver, reset > printing system, no joy. Tried printing from my Macbook with the old driver, > worked fine. Ergo, new driver bad. Neither HP or Apple has the old driver > available for download. Someone on the HP forum sent a link to a third-party > software download site for the old driver (3.0), but I’m hesitant to install > software from an unknown third party (more than hesitant, actually). No help > yet from Apple support forum either. > > I do have a backup made a few weeks ago which should have the old driver > installed. So, is there a way to extract the old driver from the clone? > Another way to recover the old driver? (Since this is 10.9, i don’t have an > install DVD to load the driver from) > > [software update rant omitted] > > Bob
Bob, Boot your iMac from your backup clone made a few weeks ago. Open up the contents of the backup clone hard drive. Go to the Library folder (not the Library in System or Users). Click on the Library > Printers folder, then drag and drop it on the icon for your iMac’s internal hard drive. Then double-click the iMac’s hard drive icon to display its contents. Find the Printers folder you just dropped, click on it and drag it to the Library folder. Choose “replace” in the dialogue window that opens. That will replace all the critical printer drivers with the old ones that worked. Close everything, then shut down and reboot to the iMac’s built-in hard drive. Your printer should be working correctly again since you’ve replaced all the new drivers with the old ones. If not, or if there are still issues, reboot to your old backup media, then do the same drag and drop process for (backupdrive) > System > Printers and (backupdrive) > Users > (your user folder) > Library > Printers. You can make your Users Library appear by clicking on your user folder, then holding down the Option key while selecting Go from the Finder menubar, then finally selecting Library from the Go spilldown menu. If there are still issues, do the same drag and drop with the relevant HP folders found in (backupdrive) > Users > (your user folder) > Library > Application Support. There also might be something lingering in (backupdrive) > Users > (your user folder) > Library > Preferences. Printer applications, as with many others, stick stuff all over an operating system. I’ve followed the steps above several times over the years to get rid of a printer update that did a FUBAR on my printers. Simply replacing the (iMac hard drive) > Library > Printers folder with a known good one should do the trick. But you may find that HP has stuck stuff elsewhere that also has to be replaced. If your backup clone is a Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper clone, then the above also can be done piecemeal using those applications. Also, if you’ve got a Time Machine backup, you can go back in time and retrieve your old printer stuff that way too, but it’s more difficult. There are other ways to revert your printer software back to the setup that worked, but these are my recommendations. CAUTION: Whatever you do, make sure all of your personal data contained in your user folder has been backed up separately from your “backup clone made a few weeks ago.” Why? If all else fails, you can re-clone your old backup onto your iMac, then import your current personal data from the current separate backup. Hope this helps. Jim -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iMac Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
