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.)?