hp Laser Jet 3380 All-in-one (AIO) printer

Posted at 11:36:20 AM in BP Blog (7) | Read count: 3917

We installed this printer on a PC that had 3 other HP printers. One was an HP AIO that was installed over the network and one was a  Inkjet that had been physically removed from the computer a long time ago, but the software drivers were still there. And there was an HP 6000 printer that we were replacing. During the installation of the HP 3380 AIO, we got an error 97 on the printer itself.  There isn't any help for that error message.  It seems to be general error message for anything HP doesn't know what to do with.

After the error message displayed, the old printer wouldn't work anymore either. The printer spooler kept crashing. I came in and when into the spool directory under system32 and then into the printers folder and removed all the spooled files and was able to get the spooler to start and then the old printer worked fine.

I decided the only way to get around the problem was to uninstall all the other HP devices. The process was rather lengthy with many error messages on the way.  After removing all the other HP devices (all printers), we attempted to install the HP Laserjet 3380. The install with the full version of the software went through in less than a minute. I knew something was wrong because HP software has a huge overhead of software for even the simplest printers. Sure enough, the printer printed, but none of the other functions worked.

One note on the install was an error message about a program called scrubber that kept crashing with a message to send the info to Microsoft. It allowed the HP install to continue. I found out later that this scrubber was an HP product that supposedly checks the installed software and makes adjustments accordingly. The HP Laserjet 3380 is an older printer and doesn't have the imagining monitor software as well as a lot of the huge unknown HP overhead the new models have.  Apparently there was a lot of HP junk still installed in the computer.  

I used this hp removal utility: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericSoftwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&cc=us&softwareitem=mp-24061-2 as suggested by bleepingcomputer. I didn't know if this was the HP software we had. Everything was uninstalled, so I wasn't certain how to tell the version that was stuck in the PC.  This removal tool worked however. I ran it 4 times consecutively. Each time, it gave a message that it was running a different level of clean up and each one took a little longer. The final run required a reboot.

After finishing with that utility, the HP LaserJet 3380 still crashed on the scrubber issue. It still installed in less than a minute. At the end, it gave me a message that it did not install properly and to run setup again. I immediately ran the setup again and got no error on the scrubber. The software took a little longer to install, but still didn't have the indications that new installs give (I've seen HP installs take over 10 minutes to complete). The install ended stating that it was successful and to reboot. After rebooting, there was still no image monitor. There is a toolbox that installs which gives http access to a local port number that updates the printer.  I opened the HP program folder and found the HP LaserJet 3380 and inside that folder was the scan tool. This tool is a little awkward. It asks if you want to print to file or email. Then you name the file and click okay. After that the scanner shows up. The first time we ran this install that didn't work, I got the same message, but when clicking the okay button, we got an error message stating that no twain compliant scanners were installed. This time, the HP scanner program did start up and the scanner worked fine.  

Setting the output requirements needed to be done through the hp toolbox. This version does scan to PDF.

Written by Leonard Rogers on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 | Comments (0)


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