Archive for March, 2025
HP Printer only seen as a scanner
by Logan Rogers-Follis on Mar.08, 2025, under Techie, Windows
Recently I came across the following error. On a Windows 10 computer, with an HP Deskjet Printer/Scanner combo it would no longer print, but you could use the scanner bed to make a copy.
Windows shows the devices, but acted as though it was only a Scanner. The following steps (source at the bottom) were used to fix this:
- Unplug any USB cable, if needed.
- Search for and open Programs and Features
- Uninstall anything to do with your HP Printer
- Search for and open Devices and Printers
- Under the Devices and Printers windows look for your HP Printer, then right-click on it and choose “Delete” or “Remove Device” (if it isn’t listed continue to the next step)
- Press the “Windows key + R” combo to open up the Run window
- Type
printui.exe /s
in the Run window and click the OK button (Note: there is a space in betweenprintui.exe
and/s
) - Click on the “Drivers” tab
- Look for you HP Printer driver. If you see it, then Click on it and click Remove at the bottom
- Click OK
- Click Apply and OK on the Print Server Properties windows
- Close Devices and Printers window
- Press the “Windows key + R” combo to open up the Run window
- Type
c:/programdata
and click OK. Browse to the Hewlett Packard folder, remove any printer related folders & files. - Restart the computer.
- Download the latest driver for your printer from https://support.hp.com/in-en/drivers
- Install the driver and follow the directions (do not plug in the USB cable, if used, until prompted to)
Source: HP Community – Printer only being recognised as a scanner
failed retrieving file ‘community.db’ 404 error
by Logan Rogers-Follis on Mar.08, 2025, under Linux, Techie
If you have been running an Arch-based distro (like Manjaro) for a few years now, you might suddenly be getting the following errors (when running sudo pacman -Syyuu
from CLI):
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from mirrors.aggregate.org : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from arch.mirror.square-r00t.net : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from mirror.wdc1.us.leaseweb.net : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files)
This is because the commuinity repo was replaced with extra
repo a few years ago. Recently the community report was completely removed (though it has been empty for a while). Generally speaking if you are seeing these errors (or getting some other odd errors when using the the GUI version of the package manager) then you will need to manually edit your pacman.conf file as listed below. According to what I have read, this would have automatically updated (provided you weren’t really far behind) unless you had already edited the pacman.conf file yourself (which I did).
Below is what I did to fix this:
kate /etc/pacman.conf
Search for the following lines and comment them out:
BEFORE:
[community]
SigLevel = PackageRequired
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
AFTER:
#[community]
#SigLevel = PackageRequired
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Then save and close the file. You will now be able to update your machine again.