Adding a Printer Driver....

[Koldov]

Feeling quite foolish for having to ask this but...

 

Over the holiday our BM arranged for a new printer to be installed. Unfortunately it is a completely brand new manufacturer and model so we don't have the drivers (and Server 2019 doesn't have them as standard).

 

Anyway it has been many, many years since I've had to do this but I've got this far:

 

1. Open Print Management.

2. In the left pane, click Print Servers, click the applicable print server, and then right click on Drivers.

3. Click "Add Driver.."

4. The "Add Printer Driver wizard" will open, click Next.

5. Pick the processor architecture for the driver - x64, click Next.

6. Click "Have disk.." and locate the *.inf file associated with the driver.

 

However, the downloaded drivers are just .exe files and the drivers on the supplied CD are .msi

 

This is the way to do it, right? I don't actually run the 'set-up' and install the printer to the print server do I (as I don't want it to start installing 'helpful' apps or to even actually print from the server), I thought it just held the driver in a repository to serve to the clients.

[LeMarchand]

Have you tried extracting the exe or msi with 7-Zip?

 

Edit: Or you could install on an unimportant machine and the extract the drivers from it.

[Koldov]

Thanks, good shout, that will probably do it... don't know why I keep forgetting this stuff! Oh well, only about 12 years until retirement...

 

Next question (and I know it's a bit of a horses for courses type thing)...

 

PCL, PS or XL...(on the CD) or PCL_XL or PCL5 from the downloads...?

Edited January 5, 2023 by Koldov

[Koldov]

OK, narrowed it down to PCL_XL (PCL6) or PCL5... anyone have any preference (and reasons for that preference)?

 

Next part...

 

I just choose the 'original' printer on the print server and in the advanced properties choose the new driver...?

 

Then I have the GPP set to 'update' and that should change it automagically, yes?

[GaryPad]

PCL-XL over PCL5. PCL5 came in 2 flavours - one for colour (5c) and one for mono (5e) - whilst PCL-XL / PCL6 doesn't differentiate; PCL-XL produces more efficient code; has better graphics compression support; supports more colour spaces including spot colour; handles vector drawing better (PCL5 married the older PCL4 format page description with the old pen plotter HP/GL language to produce a hybrid language whereas PCL/XL started from scratch to do away with any inefficiencies). It was just a shame it got tagged as "PCL6" even though it's a completely different page description language.

And yes you can just swap the driver in use on the queue through the Advanced tab (for an existing v3 Windows driver).