Have 24 new computers. Exact same build, Windows 7 Enterprise. About half are having this problem when installing printers. "Windows cannot connect to the printer." Details: "Operation failed with error 0x0000007e". I do not want to have half the computers with local port definitions and half with whatever is automatically assigned. Tried using script "rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /q /n \\myserver\myprinter" but for half it works. Others it does not. Some printers install, others consistently don't. Those that don't are HP CLJ 2550n, HP CLJ 2840n. Had problem with HP LJ 4250 but printer firmware update fixed that. Did nto fix on others. Again, half of the new PCs with same config will connect and work just fine. Ideas?

Hi, I would like to know if adding the printer as local printer works. Please check if solutions on the following thread will work: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7install/thread/a7fe6b93-5752-49a6-add7-0cf129b7b348 In addition, according to our database, if the driver has color profiles, the add printer wizard will fail. It is a known bug and our developers do recognize this issue and are working on it. If there any solution is available, it will be delivered via Windows Update. Vivian Xing - MSFT

That worked great for me - even tho the printer I was adding was a network printer. Thanks.

AllenMc - I am having the same issue on Windows 7 with several of my printers as well. Some network printers install fine and others fail with the same error message, even though they have the same drivers (HP Universal Printing PS v61.91.12.106). I tried to update the firmware on one of the printers (HP P3005 LaserJet), but that didn't help. All who have responded to this post, please re-read AllenMc's request. He doesn't want to create a local port/printer for the printers that won't install from the print server. That is not desirable in a networked environment where you have to deploy several printers to hundreds of users. I did test and installing the printer locally did work but that is not a workable solution for our environment, where we need to deploy printers via script and we need to have the printers tracked at the server level using plot tracking software (Sepialine Argos). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any luck on this? I agree jdmac installing as local is not an option. I am deploying most of my printers using group policy preferences but I have an HP 4300 that just keeps spitting me this error 0x0000007e.

I found this hotfix cured my issue with win 7 x64 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981070/en-gb

I spent a long time working this issue with HP and Canon and what ended up solving the 0x0000007e error on the Win 7 x64 clients using a 2K8 print server was: Logon to the Windows 7 X64 client machine Click on the Start button Click on Devices and Printers Click and highlight any printer already installed on the local machine. (This should allow you to see the “Print Server Properties” button right underneath the address bar at the top of the page. Click on Print Server Properties button Click on the Drivers Tab Highlight and remove every single driver (Make sure you are on the client machine NOT THE SERVER!!) Click OK and then Close the Printer Page. Go to Start /Run / and type in services.msc Find the print spooler service Stop the print spooler for at least 10 seconds Restart the print spooler service Go back to the print server and try and reinstall the printer

dg51071 - I cannot remove drivers, becouse they are in use. How did you manage to remove them? TNX

Agco - Did you instal this hotfix on the cient computer or on the server? A I also noticet in desription of this hotfix it says that helps in case of error: Windows can't open Add Printer. Operation could not be completed (error 0x0000007e). But i get a bit different error: Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation failed with error 0x0000007e.

Hi I found a hotfix on microsoft page which was supposed to solve this issue. I installed it on one of my computers, but no success. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982728/en-us#appliesto It might help you.

Hi AllenMC! Did you solve this problem`? Have an identical problem with connecting my W7-64 laptop to a printer USB-connected to my 32-bit Vista computer. Get the same error message after the driver has been downloaded and trying to install. I could live with a local port definition, however trying to establish this I am not able to connect to the host/printer (Vista-32/HP Color Laser Jet 2840) named as follows: "Reidar-PC/HP Universal Printing PS" (maybe the name of the printer is no good?). The driver installed on the host is downloaded from HP Web-site (HP Universal Print Driver PostScript v5.0.1( whic is the 32-bit version). Added 64-bit driver to this installation. Trying to make a new local port on the client with this adress: "\\Reidar-PC\HP Universal Printing PS" fail with message "No access". The printer on the host has been shared out. Any ideas?

I also experience this issue, but the hotfix from Microsoft solved the problem.

Restarting the print spooler service solved this problem for me.

I tried this with a new Win 7 x64 install; didn't make any difference. Also tried the step-by-step removal of local drivers & force reinstall. I have 4 printers that should deploy via GPO; the first 3 work every time. I'm having problems with HP LJ 4200 printers attached to our WS2008 print server (32 bit, not R2). I had a mismatch in versions of PCL 6 drivers; obtained & updated the x64 to the same version as the x86. Still not working (61.74.561.43 for both). The real annoyance is that I have a Win 7 x64 install in Vmware workstation that had no problems installing this printer. The driver is the vista x64 version, since HP only appeared to have a universal driver for Windows 7 x64. We had the same exact error with HP CP3505N printers, but this was resolved by changing the printer driver on the print server. Stopping/starting spooler did not help. Observation: when it errors, it will quickly, and always as it gets to the "Finishing the installation" stage, although that may be cosmetic. Another observation: the hp lj 4200 drivers are now present on my Win 7 x64 machine. Can't believe it's a rights issue; all assignments are consistent for the 4 printers, and I created the printer queues, so my logon owns the printers. Any other thoughts/suggestions? --alan -- Alan D Weitzsacker, System Administrator III Canisius College, Buffalo, NY 14208

One more reboot & now the printer appears..... good & bad news. The good is that it's working, but the bad is that I must have *thought* I had rebooted, and it only needed one more. It may have been the drivers? I tried switching to PCL5, which didn't seem to help, then switched back to the HP PCL6 drivers (61.74.561.43) and now all four printers appear as they should. Thanks for any consideration anyone may have given this, just the same! --alan-- Alan D Weitzsacker, System Administrator III Canisius College, Buffalo, NY 14208

I know this has been dead for a while, but I wanted to post my findings for future people searching this. My Environment: Server: Windows Server 2008 32 bit Printers: HP LJ 4100, HP LJ 4600 Driver: HP Universal Print Driver Clients: Mixture of W7 x86 and x32 My Symptoms: 32 bit clients have no issue adding printers, 64 bit clients are unable to add printers and receive an error of "Cannot Connect to Printer" with an error code of 0x0000007e. My resolution: Open 2 command prompts on the server and do a dir on c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\hpcpn*.dll in one window and a dir on c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\x64\3\hpcpn*.dll in another window. Chances are, you will not have the same file in both directories, which is what windows wants. I've tried renaming and I've tried copying the other dll file, these methods don't work. You can muck with installing new drivers all day to get these files to align, or you can do the following: When installing for a 64 bit client: Take note of the three digit number at the end of that dll file in the x64\3 directory Open regedit and browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\<Printer Name>\CopyFiles\BIDI. Change the value of the "Module" key to end with the dll that we found in the \x64\3 directory When installing for a 32 bit client: Take note of the three digit number at the end of that dll file in the w32x86\3 directory Open regedit and browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\<Printer Name>\CopyFiles\BIDI. Change the value of the "Module" key to end with the dll that we found in the \w32x86\3 directory I hope this helps everyone!

Hi Just to let you know that the above workaround (matching DLL files) worked fine in my environment : Server side : Windows vista 32bit printer HP Color Laserjet CM1015 installed drivers UPD PCL5 downloaded from HP website shared this printer with the option to support x64 clients Modified redistry to match /hpcpn111 .dll file (in my case) Client side : Windows 7 64 bit Installed the same driver as the server side Used the wizard to connect to the network-printer, during installation the drivers are automatically loaded and the issue is gone! Many thanks!

Hi Have had some problems with this issue as well. We are running W2k8 R2 printservers and W2k8 R2 terminalservers. Sometimes one terminalserver appears that generates this error message. What we have discovered was that under the printer in registry, there was a folder called Copyfiles. If we delete this from the printserver registry, we are able to connect the printers without any problems. (registry > Local Machine > system > controlset001 > print > printers > (printername) > Copyfiles ) We haven't been able to see any problems after deleting this folder. Do anyone know what it does/why it is created?

Thank you so much Tempus, your solution worked flawlessly for me. My environment is Windows 2003 32bit as print server and a Windows 7 64bit test machine. Jaco