Are your printer drivers pulverized or paralyzed?

Drivers.biz feels for you! Lately, people have been having a lot of problems with certain brands. HP printer drivers (Hewlet Packard, or simply HP drivers), and Canon printer drivers (or, as some people call them, Cannon printer drivers!) have been suffering from a lot of errors.

Printer drivers are rather complex, and cause many problems, partly because they are inadequately tested by manufacturers.

Common errors

• Solid black boxes appear everywhere on the page
• The final character on a line is missing
• Nonsensical characters are printed *~%^$#!
• Grid lines are missing
• A program crashes when printing, and Windows reports an error in a file ending with .DRV

Need a solution?

You can see that printer driver problems can be hard to figure out, since they come in many guises. There are two likely solutions:

1. Update your driver
2. Use a driver for a different printer (cheat)

Update your driver

The best solution to a printer driver problem is to get a newer and better driver. If they have created one, you can get it from the supplier of the printer driver--usually the manufacturer. The major printer manufacturers are listed below, with links to their printer drivers.

Use a different driver

If you can't get an updated driver, then you can often do a "work-around" for your problem by installing a different printer driver. Your existing programs will likely still work with the alternate driver.

There are three steps:

• Choose a compatible alternate printer
• Install the driver for the "new" printer
• Print to the "new" printer

Choose a compatible printer

Printer manufacturers tend to change their printers gradually over time. If you print to a Hewlett-Packard Laserjet 5, while pretending it is a Laserjet 4, your document should print correctly. So, if you find an older printer from the same manufacturer it will often be compatible with the one you actually own.

Install the driver for the "new" printer

1. Click on "My Computer"
2. Double-click on "Printers"
3. Check that your printer is on port LPT1, by right clicking on your current printer. Choose "Properties." Click the tab marked "Details." Look for the box titled "Print to the following port." Usually this will say LPT1. Otherwise, write it down. Click "Cancel" to close the window
4. Double-click on "Add Printer" and follow the instructions
5. Enter the port number
6. Choose "Yes" to making it your default printer
7. Close, and admire the new printer icon in the "Printers" directory!

Print to the "new" printer

Try printing a document. If it works, then you are all set! If not, then try examining your settings. If nothing is amiss, you could try a second alternate printer. Otherwise, you must find an updated driver from the manufacturer--use the Drivers.biz list at the top of this page's right column.