HP OfficeJet Manager

[Mapex5]

I have an HP Office Jet 500 all in one. The software installs fine but then when I try to start the Office Manager, I get an error saying the PC cannot communicate with the printer. HP support just hands out their pre printed generic responses about what to check but all port settings, etc are just as they should be. The printer cable is also fine because when a document is up you can select print and it works just fine. The problem is the actual Office Manager program itself.
This has happened before and I fixed it but cannot remember what I did. I remember it being something as simple as either going to Printers in Control Panel and adding a printer, or using the Add Hardware wizard, it took about 1 minute to do, but this time I've done both of those things at least 10 times each and still nothing.

[glc]

Just because it prints does not necessarily mean the printer cable is fine. Is it a IEEE1284 certified bidirectional cable, and is your printer port set to ECP mode in the bios? Both these are needed for proper bidirectional communication to use the manager software, but a simple one-way cable and port is sufficient to send a print job.

What version of Windows are you using, and is this a name brand or generic computer?

[Mapex5]

As I had posted, all the setting are correct which includes making sure the port is in ECP mode. HP had suggested all that and the port was set correctly the whole time. The cable is an IEEE1284 certified bidirectional cable. As I said, I had this problem last year but I resolved it one day in about a minute but can't remember how. The printer has been set up on this PC for 3 years with no problem of any kind.
Here's more info: PC is a Dell Dimension L series running Windows 2K. The printer has been on this PC for 3 yrs with everything working. Last year when I reformatted and then reinstalled everything thats when the problems with the Office Manager began. The printer software itself installs and the printer works fine. But the Office Manager is what gives the msg saying the printer can't communicate. Without it I can't scan or fax. To be more specific, last year the error was "HP Office Jet disconnected!" (even though it was not), this time it's "Cannot communicate with your HP Office Jet".

[glc]

I don't know if you have checked this, so I'm going to suggest it.

In device manager, LPT1, port settings - have you experimented with the interrupt settings (3 choices) and legacy plug and play detection?

[Mapex5]

Legacy P&P detection was by default unselected so I went in and selected it, 'never use an interupt' was selected by default, I changed it to 'use any interupt assigned to the port' (which is 07), what should I change it to?
I do have to say, none of these settings had to be played with before for the Office Manager to work correctly.

[glc]

If that didn't help, then we gotta look for something else. It was a thought.

Have you tried everything pertinent in this document?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?product=58160&lang=en&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=bpu01837

Are you using a CD or a download to install the software?

Download is here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?product=58160&lang=en&dlc=en&os=181&lc=en&cc=us&softwareitem=oj531en

CD ordering is here:

https://warp2.external.hp.com/Driver/dr_country_select.asp?Product=oj537enc&lang=en&cc=us

[Mapex5]

Yes, I tried the steps in the article a few times.
I am using the CD provided by HP.