Printer Settings Cannot Be Saved for More than One HP III (88253)

SUMMARY

If you have two or more Hewlett-Packard (HP) LaserJet III series printer drivers installed and configured for different ports, printer setting changes for one printer affect all other HP III printers installed. There is no workaround for this problem.

MORE INFORMATION

For example, by editing the WIN.INI file, you can create two additional ports by adding the following lines to the [ports] section of the WIN.INI file:

LPT1.LOW=
LPT1.UPP=

You can install a printer driver and configure it to print from the lower tray to the port LPT1.LOW. You can install the same printer driver again and configure it to print from the upper tray to the port LPT1.UPP. Now, instead of having to change the printer driver configuration when you want to print from a different paper source, you can select a different printer driver.

This works correctly for most printer drivers, but does not work for the HP LaserJet III. If you attempt to do this with an HP LaserJet III, the printer driver settings for one port are duplicated for the second port. Again using the above example, if you configured the HP III on LPT1.UPP for the upper paper tray, the same printer settings are saved for the HP III for LPT1.LOW.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in HP LaserJet III driver version 31.3.89. We are researching this problem and will post new information here as it becomes available.