Scanner problems with Officejet J4850 – resolved

My old multifunction printer died on me a couple of weeks back so it was time to get a new one.
This time round I wanted to add a fax to my “want” list so I went for the HP Officejet J4850.
This is probably the smallest of the multifunctions available which was an important factor for my tiny office at home.

On setting it up I was slightly annoyed by it’s overly long paper tray and I must admit not happy about the cable input design – why on earth make the smallest multifunction printer and then spoil it by adding 3 Cm’s at the back by badly positioning the usb and power sockets????  These could have easily been placed in a better position!

I have solved my space problem by not having the paper tray in place whilst I am not using it but clearly this is not the best solution – hopefully HP will sort these details out on the next version 😉

Anyway, the reason for this post is actually to share the solution to a problem I had with this device and my Mac.  After installing everything worked correctly apart from the scanner.  However hard I tried, (restart, reinstall etc) I couldn’t get my Mac to recognise the scanner.

Finally, and with only 2 emails necessary, HP support came up with the answer (which basically consisted in a complete uninstall via the utilities and then reinstall) so I wanted to post it here in the hope that it might come in useful to others who experience the same problem.

Steps to run the Scrubber:

1. Click on Go on the menu bar.
2. Click on Application and then on Hewlett-Packard
3. Click on HP Device Manager.
4. Click on the Drop down next to Information and settings.
5. Click on Uninstall AIO Software.
6. Click on Continue.
7. Select the device and press and hold Control + Options + Command (Apple) keys on the keyboard.
8. Click on Uninstall.

You will get a popup window #Are you sure you wanted to uninstall all HP Software packages#. Click on OK to continue.

Note: It will remove the software for all HP printers.  If you have any other HP printer installed, you may have to reload the software and set up the printer again.

During the process of uninstall, it might prompt you to enter the password of your computer to continue with the uninstall process. Please enter the password and click on Continue.

Once the uninstall process is completed, please follow the steps given below:

1. Click on Go and click on Utilities.
2. Click on Disk Utility.
3. Select Macintosh HD and then click on Verify Disk Permissions.
4. Once the verification process is completed, please click on Repair Disk Permissions.
5. Restart the Computer.

After performing the above steps download the software from the given link below and install the software.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=mp-58822-2&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3645100&os=219&lang=en

Thanks to HP for sorting this out quickly 🙂