Thursday, February 5, 2009

HP printer installation problems, asking for HPBMIAPI.dll

I went through the install process of a standard HP Laserjet printer today on a server, pointed it to the driver files, but then it would ask me for HPBMIAPI.dll which had nothing to do with the drivers. I did a quick search and found that the file should be located in the system32 directory (C:\Windows\system32\HPBMIAPI.dll). I browsed to that location and sure enough the file was there. I used that during the install and things completed like they should  have in the first place.

In my search for a solution, I ran across this post in the HP support forums. It looks like there can be a few other issues to cause this error as well. One of the other solutions provided is to manually register the .dll file to make sure it is loaded. You can do that in the command prompt with the command "regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\HPBMIAPI.dll". It's another option if my solution above doesn't fix it, or if you're having a slightly different issue, which is what's going on in the support forum post. I had no errors, it was just that when I got to the end of the install, it asked for the install CD or the files, then it came back again looking for HPBMIAPI.dll. If I tried to skip it, the install failed and I had to start over. Anyway, hopefully this helps some of you

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