I was called in to work on a machine running Windows XPHome SP2. It is HP hardware, about 5 years old. 1.5GB RAM. Was running well until the owner uninstalled a previous HP AIO (HP PSC 5610 All-in-One) and installed an HP C4599. He ran the typical install, and did not setup wireless. I was called in because, after about 5 days of progressive difficulty booting the machine, it now refused to leave the OS vs Recovery console screen ... mouse and keyboard inoperative. [note: using MS wireless keyboard and mouse].

I disconnected all peripherals, put on a PS/2 keyboard, and booted the machine successfully. I then added the external hard drive. When I added the printer, it again refused to boot ... and the PS/2 keyboard was also frozen. I disconnected the USB cable for the printer, and the machine booted properly. I added the wireless keyboard and mouse (disconnecting the PS/2 keyboard), and all worked properly.

HP has nothing on their website and I haven't found any articles on this. As this is a consumer-level printer, I didn't find anything in HP business customer forums, though I didn't expect to.

Does anyone have experience with this printer? It has a supplied USB cable -- any handle on whether a number are bad? Any experience with the setup software (IMHO, HP needs to do a lot better on their install sets -- a lot of the AIO setups really only install cleanly on new machines or boxes with no previous AIO installs.)?

Got a suggestion toward which I'm leaning from another forum -- USB power issue on boot. As other USB devices don't have the problem and it is only when this printer is turned on that we have the problem hanging the machine, the short-term solution is to turn the printer on when it is needed, and off when it is not. A second, potential but untested solution might be to install this as wireless rather than USB, but there are other potential issues with that, so it is deferred.