I AM VICTORIOUS

Two or three years ago I became the thrilled owner of a brand-new Hewlett-Packard (HP) Photosmart Premium Wireless All-in-One printer. I loved this printer - inexpensive ink, wireless-N, built-in quick-forms, touch-screen, scan-to-web-page interface, and on and on.

My only criticism was that the platen was not legal-size, but that only matters very infrequently.

Then last fall the computer wouldn't connect to the printer. So, as I've done many times before I uninstalled the printer software, planning to reinstall and proceed as normal.

The reinstallation error'ed out.

I battle with mal-adjusted, malcontent, socially deviant computers and assorted technologies for a living, and I certainly wasn't going to just sit there and take any disrespect from that piece of plastic and silicon.

Unfortunately, the printer was winning for several months. Every so often I'd take another crack at installing the printer software, and I never succeeded. Each attempt would last several hours - the best I ever managed was to get basic printing working, but no scanning functionality was present.

Finally, today, after another prolonged battle lasting most of the day, I've defeated the programmers at HP, Intel, & Microsoft. They put up a good effort, but in the end I was able to get the printer software installed on my computer once again, with full functionality. The guys and gals that worked on the installation software will now just have to go find somebody else to push around!

And now, in case another soul comes across this post, the gory details:
Printer: HP c309g-m
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Computer: Lenovo T420 laptop

Problem:
HP AIO installer would not run successfully. Depending on what I tried, sometimes the installer would simply begin running and then simply abort. The install program would just disappear. Other times, I'd see error messages like

"X:\hpzprl40.exe not found"

or



or

"Fatal Error"

etc....

Searching Bing or Google with combinations of terms such as HP Printer can't install fatal error c309 temp not found will result in numerous results. I spent many hours, on many days, over many months poring through the results with no success.

I tried uninstalling and re-installing various bits & pieces (anything HP-related, Adobe Flash, .NET). I tried running the installer as Administrator. I tried running the installer on 2 different graphics cards (my laptop has an NVIDIA Optimus hybrid graphics system). I tried disabling the HP Updates. I tried disabling my firewall.I tried capturing the extracted install files before the installer failed, and then running setup directly from those files instead of letting the installer extract them and then run the temp files.

Nothing helped.

Finally, today I found a post on the Microsoft Answers message board with the answer. ( http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/hp-photosmart-printer-software-installation/8681fee2-296b-4927-bc88-eeb15ade0416 )

I updated the Intel wireless driver for my laptop, and afterward was able to install the HP printer software successfully. Hallelujah!

(I still haven't re-installed Flash, but I don't think that has anything to do with the problem.)