[Condor62]

Running XP sp3 on 5 year old computer 196ram. Scanner was installed 5 years no problems printer installed 2 years no problems.

2 sets of symptoms which may or may not be related.

1) After July windows update the computer ran dead slow and would not download any updates or manually check if updates were available. Problem eventually traced to windows updater which was tranferring update request to microsoft updater, which in turn wanted to use more memory than the computer had. Problem solved by deleting microsoft updater. computer apparently running ok and updating xp normally. This took silver surfer 3 weeks to sort out, microsoft assistance useless, eventually found answer on microsoft forums from others with same problem.

2) A week later when trying to use printer for first time since above, the printer decided there was no cartridge installed even though the same one had been in machine for 6 weeks working ok. After switching on and off and changing cartridges several times it decided to print but all the usual prompts align cartridge / low ink / recycle were all missing.

I then tried the HP scanner but all the short cuts had disappeared. starting from the all programs menu did not work. Then I tried to unistall scanner without success, so put in the HP cd which said it was removing the old program before installing. When installation complete the desktop icons were missing but scanner eventually started from all programmes menu after error messages and insert disk messages. HP imagezone would not run and came up with runtime error 203 at 032B2A00. Tried to uninstall again with add/remove programmes, revo uninstaller and win utilities none of which would uninstall the HP program. Eventually deleted program in safe mode and cleared registry manually. Tried further installation from disk. Desk top icons still missing and likewise HP scanning and image zone did not appear on all programs just HP help and how to use. Found short cuts on search but neither would start program, and no error messages.

Other info

Program downloads from internet since problems began all work ok.
Virus scans with Avira, Malware bytes, trend housecall, tdss killer all negative.
CD player works ok
Also tried fixing disk with disk check, winutilities, and microsoft fixit centre. between installation attempts.
Active smart disk checker shows 4 large red lines
seek time performance threshold 187 value 248
spin retry count threshold 157 value 253
recalibration retries threshold 223 value 253
runout cancel threshold 180 value 253

Any ideas on how to get the scanner and printer to install and work ??

Thanks