Ok, a client has his old USB printer die and decides to pick up a new machine from Epson. He follows the steps to install it, but it refuses to work. When print jobs are sent to it, it shows that its printing but then the spool throws up warnings and says it lost connection. After numerous attempts at installing (8 USB ports, eight times everything got un-installed and computer rebooted for another attempt… plus just changing the port), the client gave up and went to return the printer to Office Depot where he had bought it.
The next day I found he had been given the same model printer in the hopes it had been a hardware issue and he had gotten a new USB cable in the hopes that may fix it possibly. By the evening I had gotten the call to come over and see if I could dig deep and get it working.
Since I had already gone through and tried every port previousl, I decided to try a clean install only once. And it was at this time I realized that the USB Printer Ports where not being deleted with the drivers, and they where refusing to be deleted (ie. a driver was still using them). So after a boot into Safe Mode I checked the spool out and found HP drivers in there still… and as soon as I deleted them and rebooted the port disappeared. With a quick once through to make sure registry issues where all clean and a reboot, I started the install fresh. And of course this time it worked.
So the verdict is. If you are installing a USB printer and its acting up and/or refusing to install. Check for old printer drivers and if necessary, manually delete them in Safe Mode. After you finish rebooting try again and see if that doesn’t fix the issue.
The Path for the printer drivers is normally:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS
But you should also check:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS
or pretty much all the folder in SPOOL for drivers that shouldn’t be there. Which files are those? If you used to have an HP and the new printer is a Samsung laser then its simply go through hovering over files to see if the manufacturer is HP (not Samsung). And if you don’t have any other printers installed, then you can pretty much delete all the folders/files in the drivers folder. Just leave the Color Profile Folder:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS\COLOR
And if that doesn’t work, then take the printer and find a bat. By this time you’ll want to smash it.
Tags: DIY, Hardware, HOWTO, Interesting, Tutorial
