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I just purchased my HP Officejet 4500 printer, launched the installation from the CD, and installed the "minimum installation" mode.

It installed software for 430 MB, installed Yahoo toolbar, and other crap I didn't ask for, added a whole bunch of start menu items, plus the installation took very long compared to what takes for drivers to be installed.

I obviously removed everything, but now to my question: Is there any alternative of installing driver/printer/scanner only without the HP software rubbish??

UPDATE -
OS: Win7x64

Hennes
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Shimmy Weitzhandler
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4 Answers4

8

On the CD was there a drivers folder? If there is you can install the printer manually through Devices and Printers and tell the new printer wizard to search the CD for the required drivers point to the driver's .inf file on the CD.

This will completely bypass HP's installer.

When installing the driver through the wizard you may actually find the printer in the list of models included in Windows' driver cache, failing the CD and the cache try HP's website.

n.b. you didn't specify an OS so I assumed Windows 7.

Windos
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6

Use 7-zip or similar to open the installer - the driver files are usually in there. You can often extract all the files in the installer.

Then go to add a printer in Windows, and follow the path to choosing a printer and say you have a disk. Then point this dialog at the folder to you extracted to, and Windows will give you a list of the printer drivers found in that directory. Choose your printer and away you go - no crud.

dunxd
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Here is what I did. Download the exe with the drivers and bloatware. Use 7Zip to right click that exe and extract it to a location. Now you can have the drivers to install using Microsoft's print installer wizard.

Rich
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There is an option in the installation guide that provides an option to disable all unnecessary crap.

Because my setup was in Dutch, I do not know what the option would be in English but the title says something like Installation Options and then the 4th option in blue is something about the programs that are about to be installed. This is a link that can be clicked and leads to a screen in which you can disable unnecessary or undesired options.

In my case I had to download the 144 MB driver, but the actual installation was a mere 3 MB.

music2myear
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user692638
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