Printers and scanners

[sloughman]

I have a question re- installing printers and scanners. On a Windows 7 client, if I am installing a local printer I install the drivers from installation disc, all fine but then I connect the device and windows goes through the searching for drivers for 5+mins even though have just installed them. If I cancel the windows search it says not installed. So I have to let the windows search run, regardless if i have already used the installation disc. Am I missing something bleedin' obvious ? Any help gratefully received. Edited July 24, 2013 by Dos_Box

[Dos_Box]

Have you tried downloading and installing the latest drivers from the manufactures website or installing the drivers directly via device manager?

[tmcd35]

Unpack the drivers somewhere easily navigable to and use "Have Disk", no need to let Windows search for anything.

[sloughman]

Yes I have tried latest drivers from website, although not via Device Manager.

[AJWhite1970]

Assuming the downloaded driver has an .inf, copy the whole driver to the local PC (eg, c:\drivers\printers) and then open a dos windows using "Run as administrator"

Run pnputil.exe /a /i "c:\drivers\printers\whateverthefileiscalled.inf"

This will install the driver to the driver store and then install on the local PC

 

I use this utility to preload all my drivers into my master image (but I don't use the /i switch as I don't actually want them installed...)

 

More details here:-

 

PnPUtil (Windows Drivers)

 

Hope that helps

Andrew