HP Envy Firmware downgrade, or how to use aftermarket cartridge that is refilled HP

[bigSwinginClock]

Hello,

I recently got a working, pretty much mint condition, HP Envy 4500 e-all-in-one printer secondhand for 5 dollars. It had an 'Instant Ink' cartridge in it that printed a couple shipping labels and test pages just fine, but I made the mistake of connecting it to the internet, no firmware updates were performed I checked for updates to that myself and it claimed to be up to date, and then I needed to enroll in 'Instant Ink' to use the existing ink cartridge and the only way around that was to enroll in the program which I am not interested in doing,

The tri color cart that I bought that is a refilled HP (61XL) works fine but the black cart (also 61XL), the printer says that the cartridge needs to be replaced with an error message that is unavoidable, no ability to dismiss it and continue on, and the printer is unusable until I physically remove the black cartridge, then everything prints fine, even black.

The printer works great and all the alignments and other functions work perfectly, besides being unable to use the black cartridge.

It is an HP cartridge, even though it is refilled, but I'd like it to work obviously.

What can I do to rectify this issue? I am tech savvy and am willing to downgrade firmware or interact with web services, physically modify the cartridge, whatever needs to be done.

Thanks for any responses and I really hope we can get this black cartridge working. I bought the cartridge from HP on Amazon and have contacted them but I am also posting on here to see what options are available to me.

I have already restored factory defaults, cleaned the contacts carefully on both the cart and printer with a lint free cloth, but nothing so far is getting it to stop displaying that error message. I am sure the cartridge is good, I can hear and feel the ink inside move around when I shake it.

What can be done and I appreciate any help with this issue. Thank you very much.

[bigSwinginClock]

I may have found the old firmware .ful file for my printer. I am curious and looking very hard into a utility that can push the firmware onto the printer to downgrade the firmware. I was thinking the webservices utility can be accessed and from there the file can be uploaded and installed as an 'update'. I also got a hold of the original disc for the printer and will unpack everything I can to find the .ful firmware file.

My problem right now is that I am looking for a way to install the firmware without a USB type A port available. I will update this post once if I find a way to complete this process. I believe 'cartridge protection' is a silly thing but I understand it completely from a business standpoint.

If an HP employee or another user is familiar with what I'm trying to do, downgrade the firmware on my printer to remove any type of cart protection or chip detection of an 'empty' yet actually full cart, then please share the process or at the least drop a hint as to how it's done. I would greatly appreciate it and hopefully this post will show up in google searches for others to achieve the same goal.

Thanks in advance to any help in getting this .ful file onto my printer and installed as the current firmware. I really just want to use my printer.

[bigSwinginClock · Accepted solution]

Here is how I downgraded my firmware successfully and easily!

I had to find an old HP firmware update .exe file (~circa 2013) for the HP 4500 ENVY and extracted the .ful (the extension for my HP printer firmware) file using 7z. I am sure WinZip will work or any other Archive Manager. Just make sure you have the right .exe for your printer and the oldest firmware you can find and extract the .exe into a folder (for 7zip I simply had to right click on the file, hover over 7zip, and select 'Extract to [NAME OF FILE]\' to separate the firmware from the .exe file.

I used Google to find this file, I used keywords like "HP envy 4500 firmware update file" and "HP driver firmware archive" to find what I needed. You will not find an old firmware on HP servers so all HP links are useless for this, even using TheWayBack Machine (archive.org) was fruitless.

Now, at this point, there are tutorials for other printers on YouTube to simply put the .ful or .ful2 on a USB stick and install it through the printer interface itself, with some tricks involved, BUT this printer does not have a USB type A port, only a USB type B port for a cable that ends in type A to connect it to a PC.

What I did was I connected the printer via USB with the cable from the back and let the basic drivers install. I did not use any installers except what Windows 10 did automatically. I uninstalled the drivers that were installed using device manager and uninstalled all HP apps before connecting it again.

I then went to "Printers and Scanners" on Windows 10 (you can use the search bar in the taskbar in the lower left of the screen) and clicked on my 'HP ENVY 4500 SERIES' which exposes the 'manage' button. Click 'manage' and then click 'printer properties'. Select the 'sharing' tab, and then 'change sharing options', and finally check the box to 'share this printer', give it a simple name (we'll need this later, I chose "HP4500" for mine). Also I checked 'render print jobs on client computers' (not sure if absolutely necessary to be honest, but I checked it). Click apply and you can now close this window.

Now navigate to the folder where your older firmware (the .ful file) resides and click on the location bar (where it says the path to the folder you are in) and type 'cmd' to open command prompt in the folder, or use another method like cd'ing into the directory or hold shift and right click to open command prompt in the directory where your .ful firmware file is.

Now to transfer and install the old firmware to this printer via USB connection, I entered the command:

copy /b mykonos_mp1_usr_hf_MKM1FN1322BR_update_from_1312E_signed.ful \\localhost\HP4500

picture for helpfulness

Obviously your file name may be different from mine but the '//localhost/{WHAT YOU NAMED PRINTER}' is going to be the same. The command here is copying a binary file to the printer that is locally connected. Nothing shady here. The printer receives the file and knows exactly what to do with it.

Your filename may be different for your firmware than what I have posted.

You will get an output of '1 file(s) copied'. This is good. This is what you want.

Give it a second and the flash will start. There will be five steps that look like this on screen of the HP Envy 4500

exactly what you want to happenfinal steps 

DO NOT unplug your printer during this process or it will probably be completely bricked and broken forever. The printer will reboot after a little while and it is done! You did it! First thing to do is disable auto-updates so it doesn't just automatically install the newest firmware by itself and you have to do this all over again.

I am now running an older firmware and can use whatever carts I want. Thanks HP for making this process so easy to flash old firmware to get around the BS of having to use genuine HP carts, or be unable to use carts because they are locked to another printer. What a bunch of bologna.

I know this will help someone and I am honestly surprised how easy this was to figure out, given there are millions of dollars on the line counting on that new firmware update blocking non genuine carts and protected carts and all that crap.

I want this to be the top result on Google for anyone looking for how to do this because I saw a lot of questions but not a lot of answers.... Please be careful with this process and triple check you have the right files.

I hope everyone who reads this has a great day and enjoys the extra money in their pocket.