HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver

HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver is the software that lets a computer print and scan with the ENVY 5540 all-in-one. It installs the print driver, the scan driver and the tool that finds the printer on the wireless network, so the printer appears in every program’s print dialog and its scanner answers from the computer.

The 5540 is a home printer built for documents and photos, with automatic two-sided printing and a flatbed scanner, a small touchscreen and wireless printing from phones. The driver is what exposes those features rather than leaving the computer with a basic generic connection.

The scanner is where most people meet the driver, usually in frustration. Many owners install just enough software to print, then discover the computer cannot find the scanner, because scanning needs the full software package rather than the basic driver. HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver in its full form fixes that. The sections below take each part in turn, from what the package installs to the two cartridges that decide how fast the ink goes.

Full software or basic driver

HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver can be set up in two ways. The basic driver, which the system often installs by itself, only prints. The full software package adds the scan driver and a scan application, plus network setup tools and the maintenance utilities for aligning and cleaning the print heads. If you want to scan from the computer, install the full package.

The phone-style app offers another route, handling setup and printing with basic scanning, and it suits a quick job. It is the full package that makes the printer a proper scanner on the computer, and the support forum’s answer to almost every “it will not scan” thread is to download and install it.

For checking and fixing the printer and its connection when something goes wrong, HP Print and Scan Doctor diagnoses both.

Printing, two-sided and borderless

The HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver print dialog offers paper types and quality settings, borderless photos and automatic two-sided printing, which this model does on its own without turning the sheet by hand. Black pages come out at around twelve a minute and colour at around eight by the standard measure, slow beside an office machine and fine for a household. A 125-sheet main tray takes plain paper, and a separate 15-sheet photo tray holds photo paper so it need not be swapped in and out.

The print quality suits mixed home use, from documents to the occasional photo, at up to 4800 by 1200 dpi in colour. Paper up to legal length feeds, and a range of photo and card sizes prints borderless. For printing from a phone, the printer supports the common built-in mobile standards and a direct wireless mode that connects a phone with no network in between.

The scanner, one page at a time

The scanner that HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver exposes is a flatbed, glass under a lid, scanning up to a letter or A4 page at 1200 dpi. There is no automatic document feeder, which is the limit that matters most. A multi-page document is scanned one page at a time, each laid on the glass by hand, with the scan software gathering the pages into a single PDF. That is fine for a few pages and tedious for a thick contract.

A scan takes around fifteen seconds. From the printer’s own screen, a scan goes straight to the computer or to email, and from the computer the full software scans to a file in the format you pick. For scanning a batch of pages into one PDF with control over the order and the naming, NAPS2 drives the same scanner and assembles the pages as it goes.

The wireless link

With HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver installed, the printer connects over the common 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band, and the most common setup trouble traces to the router. A router that hides that band, or a network set to a newer security mode the printer does not support, leaves the printer unable to join. Connect the printer from its own touchscreen first, confirm it has an address, and then run the software, which finds it on the network.

When printing works and scanning does not, the cause is almost always a firewall blocking the scan software or a printer address that changed after a reboot. Reserving the printer’s address on the router stops the address from moving, and allowing the scan software through the firewall clears the rest.

For finding the printer’s address on the network, a network scanner lists every device with its address.

The cartridges

The 5540 uses two cartridges, a black and a tri-colour that holds all three colours in one unit, and HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver reports their levels from the computer. Standard and high-yield versions of each exist, and the high-yield ones last roughly three times as many pages. The tri-colour design is the catch. When one of its three colours runs out, the whole cartridge is replaced, even if the other two are nearly full.

That makes colour the part that runs down fastest, and reviewers note that the colour ink goes quickly on photos. The printer can also refuse some third-party cartridges after a firmware update.

Conclusion

HP ENVY 5540 Printer Driver suits owners of the ENVY 5540 who want the full printer on their computer, two-sided printing, borderless photos and above all the scanner, rather than a bare print connection. The full package is the one to install, and it answers the “it will not scan” problem that fills the support forums.

The scanner takes one page at a time, the colour cartridge is wasteful when one colour runs out, and the wireless setup depends on the router. Install the full software, connect the printer from its own screen first, reserve its address, and the 5540 prints and scans as it should.