I've been having printer problems as well.  I have a HP D4160.  I've installed hpijs_hpoj, hplip, hplip_ppd, and cups.  According to HP website, the printer has partial support, and I have it working well enough with Xubuntu.
However, when I run:
    sudo ptal-init setup,
I get:
    *** Found "Deskjet D4100 series" but failed to communicate with it!
When I run hp-setup, it detects the printer, then says:
   error: No PPD found for model deskjet_d400.  Trying old algorithm...
   warning: found multiple posible PPD files
   Choose a PPD file that most closely matches your device:
   [blah, blah, blah  .  .  .]
but instead of listing any options, it says:
   ____  ______________________  ____________________
   ________________
   Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/usr/local/bin/hp-setup", line 496, in <module>
         mins_list = mins.keys()
   AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'keys'
Did I miss a step?
What should I try next?
Thanks,
M. Storck