How to add PnP service. Win11, Surface Pro X

I bought a HP Deskjet that was compatible with Windows 11. It arrived today. Ran into the same issues as all mentioned above, There is no Plug and Play installed in Windows 11. Tried all the options mentioned above and still no result.

As a Hail Mary, after 4 hours of browsing the internet for solutions and trying, I downloaded (again) HP Smart from the MS Store, even though I had HP Smart already on my ASUS laptop.

That worked.

That is exactly the issue most of us are having. That many of our printing and scanning devices are not compatible with ARM even though we expected them to be. Prior to get a new Surface, you need to ensure all your devices are ARM compatible, but chances are, they won't be

Oh the joys of being one of the first to use a new technology, eh?

I'm sorry that the generic Microsoft driver isn't working for you. I have been trying to work with Microsoft to get a printer driver issue corrected for one of my Brother printers. It won't print in landscape orientation. It just shrinks the page down and prints it on the top half of the page in portrait mode. It took quite a bit of chatting to get escalated to the next level of support but they are supposedly looking into it for me. We'll see.

I am surprised that the generic Microsoft driver for HP printers doesn't work. Especially, because it is obviously able to communicate with the printer in order to initialize it. It almost sounds like the Windows print subsystem may be damaged. To test this, do you have any other printers that you could try to print to? Maybe take the SP11 to a friend's place and see if it will install and print to their printer. It might be worth a shot and will give you another data point. The only bad thing would be is if it wouldn't print on the other printer, you'd probably have to reset Windows 11 to fix the print subsystem.

Hopefully HP will figure out a fix for you. I've read quite a few complaints now about the missing PlugPlay service in relation to HP's printers, so hopefully it will get looked into and corrected soon.

Hi FrederickReinders

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. The Plug and Play service is a built-in component of Windows and should already be installed on your Surface Pro X running Windows 11. However, if you are experiencing issues with the service, you can try the following steps:

1. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box.
2. Type cmd and press Enter to open the Command Prompt.
3. Type sc config PlugPlay start= auto and press Enter to set the Plug and Play service to start automatically.
4. Type net start PlugPlay and press Enter to start the service.

If still persists, please try this step.

1. Check Windows Update:
   • First, ensure that your Surface Pro X is up to date. Use Windows Update to install any pending updates, including driver updates. Sometimes, PnP issues can be resolved by updating the system.
2. Enable Network Discovery:
   • Click on the Start button and search for Network and Sharing Center.
   • In the left pane, click the link for Change advanced sharing settings.
   • Under the Network Discovery section, select the option to Turn on network discovery and click Save changes^1^.
3. Manage System Services:
   • Open the Start menu and search for Services. Click the top result to open the app.
   • Look for the Plug and Play service in the list.
   • Double-click the service to start it if it’s not already running^2^.
4. Check Printer Drivers:
   • Make sure you are using the correct printer driver for your HP 2300 printer. Visit the official HP website or use Windows Update to find and install the appropriate driver. Try to find a driver that support ARM or 32bit operating system.

Please let me know how it goes and hopefully it helps.

Kind regards

Christopher.

Hi,

I have the same issue with a Surface X and installing an HP 7740 wide-format printer. The PNP service is not installed and the driver will fail noting that the PNP service is unavailable.

The above fixes did not resolve the issue. I can not get the PNP service to appear in the list of services.

The tablet is 100% up to date. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

It turns out that I have an almost identical issue. When applying the above solutions, I discovered that PlugPlay is not present and cannot be found when searching the system services mentioned in item #3. This printer had previously been successfully installed, but it stopped functioning after an update. Reinstalling it led me to the current issue. Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

Tim