Wednesday, October 31, 2007

HP LaserJet 1020 on Mac OSX

I purchased a LaserJet 1020 printer for our home use. While it works fine in Windows and Ubuntu Linux (with proper hackery applied) getting it to work on OSX is not straight forward. If you google around you’ll find both success and horror stories on this printer. It seems HP supports the newer 1022 model officially but not the 1020. Turns out the 1022 driver will work fine for a 1020 if, and that’s a big IF, you get Mac OSX to list it in the printer list. This thread on macosxhints.com was the most informative of all. I tried the suggestions a couple of days ago but to no avail. This morning I tried again and with success! All the steps seem to be there, but the following order worked for me:

Download http://www.railsguru.com/assets/2007/4/16/1601_LJ_1022_Series_OSX.dmg;
If you have anything for the HP 1020 in ”/Library/Reciepts” delete it.
Delete anything for the HP 1020 in Printer in “Printer Setup Utility”
Install the downloaded printer drivers
Remove all files from /Library/Printers/hp/laserjet. Leave the 1020 subfolder! You’ll need the contents in the next step;
Move all files from the 1020 subfolder to /Library/Printers/hp/laserjet (the parent);
Restart Mac OSX, just for luck;
Add new printer in “Printer Setup Utility”, select HP LaserJet 1020, driver should come up, click ADD

21 comments:

  1. Very helpful.

    It worked like a charm, especially once I figured out I had the wrong usb cable plugged into my mac ;) after installing the drivers.

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  2. Perfect. I tried to get this printer working for about an hour, and then I found this page... followed the steps, and voila - worked perfectly. Thanks a bunch.

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  3. Thanks buddy. That was the only solution that really worked.

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  4. This totally fracking worked!!!

    Thansk :)

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  5. I downloaded it and all that came up is this icon on my desktop that says hp laserjet 1022 series.pkg I click on that and then installer opens it and all i can do is install it. where is the other stuff i was supposed to delete?

    after it installs, I still don't have the correct driver. I have to use 1015 instead. So it prints, but real light, even after a new cartridge, and it won't let me adjust the print quality, says I have the wrong driver.

    sigh.

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  6. Anyone here have tried to use this printer with a print server ? Can be work if i install as a IP printer on Mac OS with this driver

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  7. Thanks for this. I'd tried various approaches and always missed the bit about moving the files into the parent directory. Restart was necessary as I got an error on trying to add the printer otherwise but on restart, adding the printer took seconds.

    BTW I'm using a MacBook Pro OS 10.5.8

    Thanks again,

    Dan

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  8. I have a uncharacteristic problem with my Laserjet 1020. When I try to print from vista, the first page always comes out with dark stripes located on the right side of the paper. These stripes are always aligned with the texts that appear on the paper. Even more peculiar, these stripes only appear on the first page only, not on the rest of the document. I also tried to print two copies of a first page and I got the stripes on both document. Then I tried to print the same document on XP and it prints fine.

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  9. I have a uncharacteristic problem with my Laserjet 1020. When I try to print from vista, the first page always comes out with dark stripes located on the right side of the paper. These stripes are always aligned with the texts that appear on the paper. Even more peculiar, these stripes only appear on the first page only, not on the rest of the document. I also tried to print two copies of a first page and I got the stripes on both document. Then I tried to print the same document on XP and it prints fine.

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  10. This worked thanks!

    lonely mac user

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  11. If you select the 1022 instead of the 1020 driver it will work but you need to manually select it by pushing the driver software button and selecting it from the long list of printers.

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  12. hi ur website is not working pls help me i need this driver

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