After the most recent update of Windows 11 my two HP printers stopped working.

I have just encountered the exact same problem - you describe it perfectly.

Windows Update sneakily "upgraded" me to 24H2 without my permission yesterday (08 Feb 2025), and screwed up a number of my settings (including trival things like "wallpaper", but I decided to stick with it - until I tried, several hours later, to print a single page from Photoshop 2025. Pressed <CTRL-P>, and everything locked up for over a minute. Eventually, the print dialog did appear, but when I tried to print, everything froze again. After about 3 minutes, I heard my printer come to life, and the page appeared as expected. Under 23H2, the whole process takes about 5 seconds.

So I went to the print driver pages in Control Panel, and tried, "Print A Test Page". I got your exact same error:

Operation could not be completed (error 0x0000007e) The specified module could not be found.

Rebooted, tried again. Same issue. Tried changing printer settings. Photoshop hung indefinitely, and I had to kill it with Task Manager.

So I did a roll-back to 23H2, and first time I tried to print, got the same errors. But after a reboot, (and staying in 23H2), everything is now back to normal.

Is there a fix for my HP P2050 series printer (which I know is working perfectly, see last paragraph) under 24H2? And if not, is there a way to prevent Windows trying to reinstall 24H2 behind my back while still allowing other updates?

Hi, Aaron. Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately none of the steps 1 - 5 solved the problem. All of the steps seem to have been completed successfully, but at the end the entries for the two printers in Printers & Scanners still show "Driver is unavailable."

If I try to print a test page on the HP ENVY Photo 7100 series PCL-3, I get a window saying, "Operation could not be completed (error 0x0000007e) The specified module could not be found." The HP Envy 6400 series printer doesn't even offer me a print test page and seems to want me to use the scanner (which, incidentally, seems to work fine, showing that the printer is actually connected with my laptop).

I could try to rollback to 23H2, but this would be just to try to confirm that the problem is related to the update. I am a bit reluctant to roll back for security reasons. I have seen some comments after looking around that the problem may be that my two printers (above) are no longer supported by HP. The suggestion is that something in the Windows 11 update broke the available HP printer drivers, and that HP has chosen not to updated their drivers. The recommendation if the above comments is that I buy a new printer known to be compatible with Windows 11. This would not break my bank, but it seems a shame to pitch a pair of printer that, though about 5 years old, were still working perfectly.

Does MS have anything to say about whether the above two printers are compatible with the current Windows 11? Any further recommendatoins?

Wed 4/16/2025 20:26

Subsequent to applying two Windows Updates released during the second week of April 2025 to my Win 11 system (updates: KB5053656 followed by KB5055523), on or about 15 April 2025, I attempted run a print job. It failed. I tried several times and none worked.

Earlier that day I tried to browse the Internet and it failed, but I was able to find my way to the solution (since the onboard Microsoft troubleshooters no longer seem to work). The solution was found by opening Edge and going thru

 SETTINGS>SYSTEM>TROUBLESHOOT>OTHER TROUBLESHOOTERS 

I followed directions and got the fix so I could browse, but I noted several other options on the same page for fixing or troubleshooting other fails.

So, as soon as my printer wouldn’t work, I went back through to the other troubleshooters, found the one for printers, executed, but the fix did not work.

During the next several hours, replete with failure after failure, I realized two things: (1) I had gleaned that my network was “public” and (2) my printer was not “discoverable”.

Having always kept my network “private” I felt I better check it out to ensure something had changed me to “public”.

That was the clue that led me to the following solution:

SOLUTION:

Go to NETWORK AND INTERNET SETTINGS then at the first page of Network & Internet, select Wi-Fi (ensure toggle shows ON).

Click the ">" on the right side next to the ON toggle.

When the next page opens, click on the ">" on the right of the named network’s properties (your wi-fi net).

When the next page opens, select PRIVATE NETWORK.

Immediately after selecting PRIVATE, my queued-up print jobs began running without further input from me.

The alternative to PRIVATE NETWORK, that is, PUBLIC NETWORK (Recommended), may have been changed by the Windows Updates mentioned above since Microsoft indicates PUBLIC is the recommended setting. Unfortunately, anyone who had configured their printer profile as Private and then applied the updates most likely ran into problems since the printer is not discoverable on a PUBLIC network, that is, when PUBLIC is selected.

Worked for me; hope same for others.

After the most recent update of Windows 11 my two HP printers tell me that their drivers are unavailable.. This is apparently a windows issue, as I am able to print from my iPhone. Oddly, the scanners for the same printers still work. HP has been unable to install their most recent drivers. How can I fix this?

Larry Hunsicker

I can't. Add drivers printers HP