Reinstalling HP Photosmart Software

I have an HP Photosmart 3210 All-In-One printer on a Windows XP HE system. Recently, I wanted to try out HP's OCR software but I keep getting an error message saying that there is a problem communicating with the printer. This is strange to me because I can use the HP Toolbox and print a Test page as well as check the Estimated Ink Levels.

I downloaded an HP diagnostics tool and it tells me that it can't find certain components that I need to scan with the HP software. FYI, I can scan from other appplications like photoshop, ms office, and others but not HP applications. It tells me to re-run the install CD but I'm not sure how to do this.

The reason I say that is because I'm used to REMOVING software BEFORE re-installing and this Diagnostics utility is not telling me to do that. Is it wise to re-install HP's software over top of the old installation or should I remove the old installation first?

A fear I have in the back of my mind is that I will mess up the connection with the USB controller. I have checked the Device Manager and checked the Properties. Everything checks out and I'm pretty sure this is just a problem with the HP scanning software, but I'm concerned with the connection as well!

Oh yeah, one more thing, I do find the HP applications in question in my start menu and they do start up but, they will not perform as designed!

Thanks in advance!

 

Thanks chief! The thought of treating it like a new install did cross my mind, and although I didn't consider using IOBit in the process, I just downloaded it and will use!

Thanks again for your time and efforts!

 

Thanks again Major Attitude...went through the process and everything went just fine...well, sot of! rolleyes

I found that when running IOBit (in batch mode), it allows the software uninstaller to do the uninstalling. In this case, the HP uninstaller popped up and did it's job. Where I screwed up at first is when the HP window finished uninstalling, just one of it's programs (which was bundled into the overall installation), it requested a reboot! Ooops, yes I clicked reboot and didn't let IOBit finish it's batch job, and when windows came back up, the rest of the HP software was still there. I should have know better because I could see IOBit running in the background and it was just getting started!:-o I need to make a note to myself to be more patient!

Anyway, I ran IOBit all over again and finished off the rest of the installation, re installed from CD and everything is now working correctly! :cool

Once again, I can't thank you all at Majorgeeks enough!:major