Poor HP Drivers for x64

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I have an older HP 1200 series printer, the PSC 1210 All In One.
I just recently built a new system with Windows 7 x64 and the printer is useless.

While it can still scan and (barely) print, fast draft misaligns consecutive lines, best quality prints a double image and legal sized printing cuts off after A4 length.
And that's just what I've found in the first week.

There was talk about installing a different model HP driver to get it to work, but doing so gives me no functionality.

Two things of interest my research turned up. One was that the x64 drivers seem to have been buggy since Vista, and HP isn't bothering with fixing them. The second one was a report of someone whose problems went away when he installed Windows 8.

While I'm not going to go to Win8, my question is if you can install Win8 drivers on Win7, and if anyone knows how to GET those drivers without installing Win8.

Honestly, switching to a 64-bit OS has been harrowing with how many programs fail to work properly. You'd think they just came up with the idea and not that it's been around more than 10 years.
 
well for one,this printer is not supported by windows 7 32 or 64 bit.there are simply not drivers for it using win7.there are also no drivers for it in win8.the solution here is to get a newer printer that is supported by win7.on another note ive not had any problems running my programs on win 7 64bit at all.what programs are you running that dont work on it?have you tried running them in compatibility mode?
 

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I don't know what you mean by 'not supported'. If you mean, we are giving you crappy drivers that we won't update, then yes. If you mean there are no drivers, than that's not true. There are drivers on the Win7 disc and if you go to Windows Update, there is an update to that.

Compatibility mode just makes things run like an older OS, but still a 64-bit older OS. I've run into a lot of things I've had to update, tweak, or just outright replace with different software. Not feeling like getting off topic with more details though.

Anyway, the point being, there are drivers provided for both Win7 and Win8, just not good. It still doesn't answer the questions of can Win8 drivers be used on Win7, and is there a way to maybe manually extract them from a Win8 disc without actually installing the OS.
 
win7 will try to find a generic driver for this printer but it is really not supported by win7.good luck making it work with win8.it not about good or bad drivers,but rather the hardware is so old its just not going to work with the newer os.you can buy a new printer for $100 so its not worth the hassle to try to get this printer to work with a newer os.and no you are not going to get a better driver from the win8 install disk.the best driver will come from your printers manufacturers site.if they dont have one there is a very good reason.its just not supported.
 

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This isn't like generic mice or keyboards drivers.
Microsoft does not write the drivers for every single peripheral. They only deliver whatever stripped down driver the manufacturer provides to them.

The driver installed by Win7 actually contains an HP logo, and uses some of their proprietary color management do-dads. They are official HP, and they are crap.

That said, I've spend the day cludging around with the Win7 drivers and created my own custom pack that fixes most of the problems.

I am Jack's own solution.
And this is me sharing the wealth: http://www.mediafire.com/download/rzcbmz7c779jdpc/HP_PSC_1200_AiO_for_Win7_x64.rar

I hope this helps some other people. If anyone can find solutions to the last of the problems, please comment.