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I bought an HP LaserJet 4050N printer from Craigslist for really cheap. The guy who sold it said the only thing wrong with it was the network card, but now that I've been trying it out, I'm not so sure that was the only thing wrong. I confirmed that there was some kind of problem with the network card; I'd plug it into my router but the green light would not activate. So I purchased an HP JetDirect 600N network card off eBay, also for very cheap.

I swapped out the network card, and that appeared to work. The green light turned on when connected to the network, and my computer could see the printer on the network.

However... as soon as I try to print to the printer over the network, it immediately pops up a message on the printer's display that says error # 79.8109. I'm not sure what that means.

So I tried next to connect to it directly using the parallel port. I don't have a direct parallel cable; instead it's a parallel-to-USB cable which I'm using on my Windows 8.1 (x64) machine. That seemed slightly more successful, but still not great. When I tell it to print a single test page over that port, it continually spits out page after page. In the midst of doing this, it may or may not show "41.5 Printer Error" on the display (while continuing to print anyway). Every other page is blank, while the remaining ones have one or two lines of gibberish on top (pictured). Then it inevitably paper jams after a dozen or so pages. I'm using the HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PCL6.

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I also noticed there's a small bit of rust on the back panel.

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I realize this is a bit of a longshot, but I'm still asking here anyway with the hope that someone might have more insight on these old printers. I know that when they do work, they work really well.

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  • "I bought an HP LaserJet 4050N printer from Craigslist for really cheap. " The next step would be to get back to the seller about the misrepresentation.
    – fixer1234
    Dec 24, 2014 at 6:00
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    0_0. Thats not a 'small bit of rust'. That looks pretty gnarly.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Dec 24, 2014 at 10:50

2 Answers 2

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For anyone else who finds this page when tracking down this error, Error 79.8109 is simply the result of using the wrong printer driver (i.e. the HP Universal PCL6 driver, as provided under Windows 8 and 10). This driver does not work correctly with this printer. In general this error isn't a formatter problem.

Since Windows 10 no longer provides the proper driver for this printer, the Universal PCL6 driver does seem a reasonable choice, but it simply isn't compatible. You'll then need to delete/uninstall the printer and power cycle it before trying anything else.

If you have a generic Postscript driver available, this can often be made to work correctly, although you won't get to select things like Economode or set the resolution. HP do offer a working Windows 10 compatible driver on their website, but I can't currently provide a link since their driver downloads site is down. (When their site is functional again, I'll endeavour to come back and provide the details.)


Edit (Oct 2023): HP provide a Postscript 'universal print driver' which shows up on the 4050 driver page for Windows 10/11. I no longer have any suitable Windows installations on which to try it, but for now the URL is

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software13/printers/UPD/upd-ps-x64-7.1.0.25570.exe

If that doesn't work, the results page is:

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-laserjet-4050-printer-series/25475

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    I ended up disposing of this printer years ago, but I'm really appreciative of your willingness to provide helpful answers to folks just now discovering this. Thanks!
    – soapergem
    Aug 19, 2021 at 19:20
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    @soapergem Thanks for the reply. I try to do what I can to prevent good equipment being scrapped. We produce 50 million tons of e-waste per year, a large part of which is due to things like software bloat (e.g. a 2GHz quad core phone is no longer enough to run simple phone apps) or missing drivers (i.e. because Windows 7/8/10 use a different driver model from XP, or OS X has changed an API layer yet again). This stuff makes me crazy. Anyway thanks again for the reply! I appreciate it, and it genuinely goes some way to undo the crazy.
    – Peskydan
    Aug 20, 2021 at 20:29
  • Thanks for this. I have a 4050N that works fine with other machines, but just tried using it with a Windows 11 VM and it caused this error. I've uninstalled the device from Windows and power cycled the printer, but now every time I boot the VM the printer immediately crashes. Any ideas how I can completely remove the broken driver?
    – Jules
    Oct 14, 2023 at 11:18
  • Sorry Jules; I'm yet to use Windows 11 so I don't know what might be causing that. If Windows is crashing the printer then it sounds as though the device wasn't truly removed, or perhaps Windows is automatically installing the wrong driver again whenever it sees the printer.
    – Peskydan
    Oct 14, 2023 at 13:32
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There appear to be quite a few things wrong with this "working" printer.

Error 41.5 refers to paper feed errors. That also explains why it jams regularly. This page lists some things you can try. You may need to clean and/or replace various parts in the paper path, starting with the feed rollers.

The only mention I found for 79.x errors refer to a faulty formatter board. If that is your problem, then you will need to replace it. But I suspect you can get newer and better printers for less than the formatter!

Before you replace it, try a cold reset on the printer, to reset everything to factory defaults, like this:

Remove the Jetdirect card. Turn printer off. Hold the GO key. Turn printer on. Continue to hold the GO key until the printer reads COLD RESET. Release GO. INITIALIZING appears. Then RESTORING FACTORY SETTINGS Followed by OFFLINE. Press the GO key to put back on line. Switch off and reinstall the Jetdirect.

More info is here.

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