Moan about Windows 7 and printers

[googlemad]

So at home the parents have got a HP LaserJet 6P printer connected to a XP machine and shared using Windows built in printer sharing. Which works great with XP and Vista clients.

A few days ago I upgraded my Mum's laptop to Windows 7 and tonight attempted to try and set up the printer link on her laptop.

Windows 7 automatically detected the share on the network, but then complained it couldn't find a driver on the network. So I did what one site suggested and download the Novell print driver extraction utility on the XP box to extract the XP drivers and copied them across to the laptop then pointed Windows 7 to the drivers folder on the laptop. Still no joy, just a weird error.

In the end I had to add a local LPT1 'dummy' printer, at the drivers screen select 'Windows Update' which luckily picked up the HP 6P driver series (Why oh why have they removed drivers like these from the default Windows 7 install when these sort of printers are probably still in heavy use particulary in business due to their tank like build quality!!), installed the driver then added a network printer again which luckily detected I now have a HP 6P driver and installed without a hitch!

Unless somebody could tell me otherwise, I could not manually select a driver and do Windows Update when trying to connect to the network share printer which is totally crazy as XP / Vista allowed this!

[jsnetman]

To be fair thats a pretty old printer but on the other hand you could have used the HP universal print driver for win 7.

[localzuk]

Sorry but you're complaining about a printer that was launched around 13 years ago not working with an OS that just came out? The amount of drivers and the like that would have to be installed with Windows would be huge if they kept everything in there. Offloading them to the Microsoft Update service seems like a pretty sensible thing to do to me...

Personally, I'd be happy that it works at all!

[cookie_monster]

(Why oh why have they removed drivers like these from the default Windows 7 install when these sort of printers are probably still in heavy use particulary in business due to their tank like build quality!!),

It's a bit of a pain but you know when people complain about the disk footprint of Vista/7 the reason that it's so large is the 2+ Gb of drivers. To stop this becoming ridiculously large some drivers have to go. I really can't blame MS for dropping a printer of this age they can't be expected to keep every driver ever created on the install media.

[DrCheese]

In the end I had to add a local LPT1 'dummy' printer, at the drivers screen select 'Windows Update' which luckily picked up the HP 6P driver series

I have the same with my parents old Officejet R45 that's shared across the network.

You can use the windows update catalog to force it to download drivers that aren't installed by default, which is really handy as adding a network printer doesn't allow you to search windows update.

[broc]

I must admit I was highly surprised to find I could get my 11 year old network attached Lexmark Optra SC 1275 Colour laser printer working with 64 bit Windows 7..... I had to use a 64 bit Lexmark Universal PCL5 driver. This printer was designed for NT 3.5 & OS/2

There is a downside of course, I cannot justify buying a replacement now