This is a continuation or rather a subset of my previous two posts on HP Network Lasers. A later discovery which I thought I should share with those who were following those posts -to complete the picture was that, both Windows XP & Vista support HP Network printers that have dynamic IP addresses.  Although I still strongly recommend that you should opt for a static IP address for the sake of an easy way to access the web configuration interface, I choose to document it here if only for academic reasons.

You can add a TCP/IP port for printers from two places (maybe more). If you have already installed a printer, right click the printer and click on properties. In case of Vista where the user is running as a standard (limited) user* , after you right click,  Go to the Run as administrator > properties and of course enter the password of your administrative account. Click on the Ports tab. You can click on Add port here to invoke the wizard.

Add new printer port

The other place where this can be done is from the Add printer wizard from your Printers folder ( Control Panel > Printers). Click on Add Printer. Select Local Printer and after you disable the Automatically  detect and install my plug and play printer. Clicking next should get you to the above screen. Select Create a new port and then Select HP Standard TCP/IP Port.

If  you are adding the port from the printer properties screen you should see the following screen (shown below)

Add TCP/IP Port

From here onwards, the procedure is similar for both methods. The screenshots with the blue title bar were taken on XP while those with the grey translucent title bar  were taken on Vista.

Type in the IP address of the printer

In the screen above, type in the current IP address of the printer, give it a meaningful port name and check the box Always print to this device, even if its IP address changes

Finished

The installation is complete -Happy Printing!

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