HP UPD - System Administrator's Guide HP UPD 5.6.5
Best practices—upgrade
Reasons to upgrade—Upgrading to the current HP UPD is advised for customers that:
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Need new print driver features introduced in the release.
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Are experiencing symptoms from resolved defects documented in the release notes.
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Require support for recent Microsoft operating system releases. For example, Windows 7 support was
added to the HP UPD v5.0; Windows Server 2008R2 support was added in HP UPD v5.1. Windows 8 and
Windows Server 2012 support was added in v5.6.0 for PCL6 and PS.
Predictable upgrades—The most consistent and reliable method to obtain predictable results is creation of
new printers using the new driver version, forcing all settings to installation defaults. This can be automated
with AUTOUPGRADEUPD.EXE. Besides the AUTOUPGRADEUPD.EXE, HP has provided several tools in the
HP Printer Administrators Resource Kit (HP PARK) to enable deployment and administration. To download the
HP PARK, go to
www.hp.com/go/upd and click Download software. Click a print driver, verify your language,
and then click your operating system. From the table that lists the HP Printer Administrators Resource Kit,
click Download.
Changing PDLs—Avoid switching PDLs during the upgrade process. This might result in unpredictable
results. If you need to switch PDLs, the best practice is to delete and recreate the printer. For those that
choose to switch PDLs during upgrade, PS to PCL 5 or PCL 6 HP strongly recommends that you delete and
recreate the printer.
Testing—HP performs upgrade testing using typical operating systems. Your environment is likely different
from our test environments, so you are strongly encouraged to perform your own upgrade testing in a test
environment.
Printer name should be different than driver name—The printer name is an arbitrary name assigned to
identify a print queue. By default, the HP UPD install sets the HP UPD printer name to be the same as the
driver name (i.e. "HP Universal Printing PCL 5"). The printer name can be changed without affecting the driver
name. HP recommends administrators change the default printer name to not match the driver name. The
printer can be viewed, defined, or changed from several access points:
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During installation, such as Add Printer Wizard, the name can be specified, or the HP UPD installation
default of "HP Universal Printing [PDL]" or "HP Universal Printing [PDL] (vX.Y)" will be applied. If a
printer with the default name exists on the system, "(Copy 1)" will be appended to the HP UPD default
name. HP UPD 5.4 and earlier will display "HP Universal Printing [PDL]" or "HP Universal Printing [PDL]
(vX.Y)".
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After installation, the printer name can be viewed or changed in the Printer's folder by selecting the
printer and right mouse clicking Printer Properties. The Name field is located at the top of the General
tab.
Benefit of HP UPD version name installation—For share printers (i.e. print servers) HP recommends
implementation of the version specific driver name. The version specific model selection during HP UPD
installation allows control over the upgrade and migration strategies. Multiple versions of the HP UPD could
exist on the same system. For example v4.7, v5.0 and v5.1 could all co-exist on the same system assuming
each was installed choosing the version specific driver name. This benefit allows customers to upgrade
drivers for newly released HP devices without having to re-test or re-certify legacy devices for every new
release of the driver. For instance, assume a print server has 100 existing printers installed all bound to the
v5.0 version of HP Universal Printing PCL 6. Further, assume that new HP printers have been purchased and
only support v5.1 of the HP UPD. The administrator can create new printers using the HP UPD v5.1 version-
specific install without affecting existing printers that use a previous version of the HP Universal Print Driver.
48 Chapter 6 Upgrade the HP UPD ENWW