well stone the crows.... after a couple of days of not being able to reach the IP address, all of a sudden the page loads (I had kept the window open), connecting to the printer. Since the printer IP address had magically just been dicovered, I figured it was worth running the search again on the HP install thing. Of course, it found the printer this time and completed the wireless install and I can print wirelessly again!
I have not done anyting different, just opened up the laptap and bang there it is. Just out of curiosity, any idea why this could be?
Thank you for all your help.