Well, I reinstalled the drivers that I got from HP for my Laserjet 4ML, but when I tried to do the whole printer setup thing, the printer still didn't show up. In fact, the only printers that do are those on a network to which I belong.
Unfortunately, the printer does show up in Previous System 1. I did a search with Spotlight and found lots of hits for it, located in various parts of that old System.
As I said, it's very odd that the new System seems to be only a small part of a complete System. It is the same as the folder called System that resides _within_ the previous, archived System folder, the one with a Library folder in it that holds Automater, Caches and so on. Could I have downloaded only _part_ of OS X when I did the archive and install? (It was indeed a weird download, with the installer asking incessantly for disk 2 but finally going on to disk 3).
Is there any way to replace the newer folder with the previous one? At least, that one has everything in it, including my printer files.
By the way, I used Disk Utility to repair permissions (the disk itself doesn't seem to need repairs) and I zapped the PRAM. When I have tried (repeatedly) to use DiskWarrior to build a new directory, however, it got only partway through step 5 and then gave up, saying that there was too little memory to continue. I thought that didn't happen with OSX! Oh, woe!
If there's anything further I can do at this point to get back to where I was, I welcome suggestions.
Thoroughly disgusted but hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel,
jenny
Sorry to be such a nuisance. I'm sure that you can understand, though, why I'm pushing this so hard.