cannot connect hp officejet 6500 in ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and have had great difficulty getting my hp deskjet 6500 to work. In the previous version of Ubuntu, I did nothing and the printer was automatically usable very nicely. I downloaded Hplip 3.10.2 and followed the instructions for setting this up meticulously; unplugged and plugged the printer in. It all went well until i got to the HP Device Manager - Setup. Under "Select from Discovered Devices "the model and URI were listed. I clicked "next." There, at 'Setup Device' the printer name was listed, but the PPD file line was highlighted in yellow, saying "Not found. Click browser to select a PPD file." I clicked the browser and many HP printers were listed but not officejet 6500 (in fact NO officejets) I checked all the nearby PPD folders for something, (even just tried several that looked remotely similar) but nothing worked. The ones I chose gave the error message: printer que setup failed; Please restart cups and try again. Here it ends. About ten days ago. I gave up and next time I tried to print something the printer was there and worked. I couldn't tell why. Now on this latest reboot, it does not work. I am stuck at the HP device manager window without a PPD. I cannot figure out what else. I am fairly new to ubuntu. I do not have a technical background, and am not familiar with a lot of technical terms.

I entered hp-check -t in the terminal, The last line said: "No errors or warnings."

i would appreciate any help available.

Thanks,
BT