HP LaserJet 1020 Driver on Windows 10 and 11: A Discontinued Model That Still Works

HP stopped publishing drivers for the LaserJet 1020 in 2009. The printer keeps printing. That gap — between what HP officially supports and what the hardware can actually do — is exactly where most people get stuck.

The LaserJet 1020 uses a host-based printing system. Unlike PostScript or PCL printers that process print jobs internally, the 1020 offloads most of the rendering work to the host computer. This means it needs a specific driver to communicate that rendering pipeline — Windows’ generic printer driver won’t handle it, and HP’s own Windows 10/11 support page for the 1020 either 404s or redirects to a dead end.

The good news isn’t that HP fixed this. They didn’t. The good news is that the original driver still works, and it’s still installable — if you know where to look and what process to follow.

Why HP’s Support Page Is No Help

HP’s official support page for the LaserJet 1020 (support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-laserjet-1020-printer) has been intermittently available and unavailable over the years. As of 2026, it typically shows drivers only through Windows Vista or Windows 7 — nothing for Windows 10 or 11.

HP’s position is technically accurate: they never tested or certified the LaserJet 1020 driver against Windows 10 or 11. That doesn’t mean the driver doesn’t work. It means HP won’t tell you it does.

This matters because a lot of people throw out a perfectly functional laser printer because they assume “HP doesn’t support it = can’t use it.” That assumption is wrong for the LaserJet 1020.

What Actually Works on Windows 10

On Windows 10 (both 32-bit and 64-bit), the HP LaserJet 1020 driver from the Windows 7 era installs and runs correctly on most systems. The installation process requires a workaround because the installer was written before Windows 10’s signature enforcement rules were tightened:

Connect the printer via USB and let Windows fail to find a driver automatically.
Open Device Manager, find the printer listed as “Unknown Device” or “HP LaserJet 1020.”
Right-click → Update Driver → Browse my computer → Let me pick from a list.
Select “HP LaserJet 1020” if it appears, or point it to the extracted driver folder manually.

The driver that makes this work is the hpijs host-based driver package — the same one HP published for Windows XP/Vista/7. It’s a 32-bit driver, which Windows 10 still supports. On 64-bit Windows 10, it runs through the WOW64 compatibility layer without issues.

Windows 11: A Different Problem

Windows 11 removed support for 32-bit legacy printer drivers in its 22H2 update. This is where the LaserJet 1020 situation gets genuinely harder.

The original hpijs driver package is 32-bit. It won’t install on Windows 11 22H2 or later through the normal path. Some users report success by enabling the “Allow print spooler to accept client connections” policy and using the Windows 10 driver through a remote connection workaround — but this is fragile and not practical for most people.

The more reliable path on Windows 11 is a 64-bit version of the host-based driver, which HP never officially published for the 1020. However, HP did publish 64-bit host-based drivers for later models in the LaserJet 1022 and 1018 series that share a compatible rendering pipeline with the 1020. These drivers install on Windows 11 and work with the 1020 hardware — not as a hack, but because the underlying print architecture is the same.

PrintPro Driver Pro’s driver archive includes the compatible 64-bit package mapped specifically to the LaserJet 1020’s hardware ID. It’s the same logic as the manual workaround, but without the research and the trial-and-error of finding which driver version maps correctly.

I added discontinued-model support to the tool precisely because of situations like this: hardware that works, manufacturers that stopped caring, and users being told by official channels that the solution is “buy a new printer.”

The One Thing That Won’t Work

Network printing. The LaserJet 1020 is USB-only — there’s no network port, no WiFi, no Ethernet option on the hardware. If your goal is to share it across multiple computers on a network, you’d need to connect it to one machine via USB and share it through Windows printer sharing. The driver limitation doesn’t change this; it’s a hardware constraint.

For USB printing on a single machine, the 1020 is still a fast, reliable, toner-efficient workhorse that outlasts most modern inkjets by years.

Driver Installation Summary

Windows Version	Driver Path	Works?
Windows 10 (32-bit)	HP LaserJet 1020 Win7 driver, direct install	Yes
Windows 10 (64-bit)	HP LaserJet 1020 Win7 driver via Device Manager	Yes, most systems
Windows 11 21H2	Win7 driver with manual Device Manager install	Often yes
Windows 11 22H2+	Requires 64-bit compatible package (1018/1022 series)	Yes, with right package
HP’s official support page	—	No driver available

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