- Hp officejet pro 8600 plus software ink cartridge hack update#
- Hp officejet pro 8600 plus software ink cartridge hack driver#
Hp officejet pro 8600 plus software ink cartridge hack update#
We recommend blocking any automatic update feature baked into your printer, to avoid this happening in the future.
Hp officejet pro 8600 plus software ink cartridge hack driver#
If your system has already been locked out by the firmware update, the newer driver may be your only option. HP has published instructions for its driver update method, available here. There’s a huge range of affected models, though all appear to be OfficeJet Pro printers. Especially in this day and age, when most printers offer plug-in-and-it-works functionality, people aren’t likely to think of a print driver as containing a DRM scheme or the means to bypass one.
If they can’t get ink to work properly from a third-party, they’ll purchase it elsewhere. Of course, you’re not meant to know that - and HP is well aware that most office managers will just buy more ink. Instead of giving anyone the freedom to use printer ink they select themselves, HP locks you out of the device by default, then gives technically proficient users the option to sneak back in.
I have to admit, it’s a clever workaround. But it’s a manual download you can grab, rather than one the company is pushing. HP does still offer a printer driver that doesn’t activate this lockout. The company has started again, because if you’re going to reserve the right to piss off your customers, why wouldn’t you use it? The firmware update it’s pushed out to re-enable cartridge lockouts will once again tell you you’re using the wrong ink: Last year, everyone blew up about this and HP sensibly stopped doing it, though the company announced that it reserved the right to start again - because nothing beats pissing off your customers for a second time in a row. Of course, the “correct” ink cartridge happened to be for branded ink you buy directly from HP, at vastly inflated prices. Roughly six months after the last firmware update had been installed, multiple HP printers suddenly stopped working, claiming they had been filled with the incorrect ink cartridge. If you have a HP printer you may be needing the set up cartridges and it may not let you use your HP printer u.
The company took considerable fire for the move, particularly since it had distributed the lockout as an invisible trigger in a previous firmware update. Hp printer override the setup ink cartridges. Last year, HP pushed a stealth firmware update that started killing printers that used ink sold by third-party vendors.