I have not had any problem using an HP printer for a very long time now.
I do still install hplip along with hplip-gui but I sometimes wonder why these days as I never need it any more for the head cleaning jobs etc for which I used it in the past, and my printer, in my case wireless connected, has been found by the system immediately after installing the OS and always worked out of the box.
Just out of interest what do you see if you go to
http://localhost:631/ in your web-browser, and search for the printer with that, using CUPS?
Have you also considered trying another USB cable or a different USB port; maybe one or other is faulty?
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