#it's useless to store information that'll be outdated in a few months

[ardeawritten]

I got my circa-2007 HP LaserJet to speak to my 2021 desktop running Windows 10 today, by following an amalgamation of other problem-solving steps and manually installing the wrong driver first, which then created a path to the right driver by getting the software "close enough" to recognize the hardware. it had a migration error that wouldn't let it work with Microsoft's "generic" printer driver and there isn't a way to download drivers via browser from HP anymore, but there's a back door to them via the computer's own device manager apparently. Just took a couple times through all the steps to get the right driver to show up for the right device plugged into the right port.

Millennial problem-solving is the fact that I have installed this printer on three different computers with four different operating systems and it's been a completely separate process each time that was *never* the plug-and-go that Windows pretends it is. Memorizing the steps is useless, because the steps will be different next time I need them but knowing how to interpret outdated advice given on an old HP help forum and then follow youtube instructions recorded on a different operating system and apply them to the interface I'm working with now? Priceless. Also I'm still surprised it worked.