>When addressing 32 bit windows manufacturer supplied printer drivers, like the HP 4M, VFP 5 would regularly crash with a '10h' error. The resolution was to load the M$ provided driver for the same printer and there was no problem then. Now, with VFP 6, we have some customers experiencing a "total system hang up" requiring a re-boot of the entire system when addressing a printer with HP's driver, but not with M$'s driver for the same printer. Does anyone know of a better solution? There appear to be some functions in the HP driver not provided by M$'s driver -- like animated problem screens which show the lights / paper path / error conditions on the screen when these occur. To date, changing to M$ printer drivers has been our response.

HP has a horrible history with drivers, and it affects plenty of apps written in other lanaguages as well. Microsoft is often several driver versions back from HP at any given time; the odds on the MS-provided driver working are nearly infinitely greater than the latest HP driver. As a rule, I've often fallen back to drivers for older compatible models when I've encountered problems with HP printers; for example we're using HP IIIsi drivers for the HP 5si printers in PCL mode. We probably sacrifice a few features in the new PCL drivers (most of the people who need the advanced features are using a PostScript driver in any case), but the IIIsi drivers are rock-solid.