Windows 10 and Laser printer

Rabid Robot wrote:
On 2019-08-22 3:00 p.m., Johnny wrote:
On Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:15:14 -0500
Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Windows 10 version 1903 OS build 18362.239.
Printer Okidata c5150n, driver C51200GDEA.exe
Couple days ago I sent a file to the printer but nothing happened, I
last used it a couple weeks ago and it was fine then.
Did a bunch of things such as delete and reinstall driver, tried it
in USB and network modes, nothing, no messages or warnings but found
it had disappeared from the add printers page, tried to add printer
but no luck, tried new Lan and USB cables, zilch, Ran up a Linux Mint
live USB stick and the printer works fine, Same for MX Linux.
So the printer is OK and it has to be our friendly Windows again with
their lovely update gifts , I suspect another crappy update so even
tried a new fresh install, Nope still no printer, So who has an idea
on how to proceed now?
thanks for all help and ideas.

Rene



Maybe Windows 10 just stopped supporting it. I think I remember you
saying it was an old printer.

I just wanted to tell you, that now you can make the scroll bars as
wide as you want them in Linux Mint Cinnamon.

Score one for Linux in its dedication to supporting all hardware whether
outdated or not.


With Windows, keeping a printer running is a measure of
your ingenuity. It's possible to make ancient crap run,
if you know all the recipes. Sometimes, a "look alike"
driver happens to make another printer run. There
are "universal drivers" for some printer categories
(more than one category too), which can be used if
the manufacturer doesn't have a specific driver.
I was using that approach, to build a "Postscript printer
to FILE" for some of my setups here. (I was then
using Distiller to make PDFs from that. Windows 10
makes PDFs directly, so that approach isn't necessary
there now.)

What Rene just did, try an INF, is just one of the
options. There is also some Windows Update thing,
where a whole library of ancient printer drivers
(maybe even some dot matrix ones) get downloaded,
and "that takes an hour to download". So whatever
that recipe involves, the arrival of the "kit" is
rather lengthy, and might well be fetched one
package at a time, rather than being a giant
ZIP or something.

The trick then, for the poor end user owning just one
printer, is which one of those methods will offer
"good fishing". And odds are, there isn't a single
web page "documenting all the fishing holes you can try".

It was the same way with scanners. Some people here, would
offer advice right away to just "give up". But some
posters manage to get their scanner running anyway,
through dogged persistence.

Paul