Why would anyone need to reinstall the printer driver? Well, it happens more often than you think. You have a printer and it works fine. Then you go to move, so you pack up everything including your printer. Some things happen and a few months go by. When you get around to attaching your printer again, it does not work.
Help! I Do not Have the Printer CD
Something about printer CDs make them vanish into thin air. You know you had the installation CD and you could have sworn you put it with all the other CDs. Now you need it and it is just flat out gone. No need to worry. We have got you covered.
Epson, Canon, Lexmark, and all the other top name brands understand people lose the CD. Therefore, they make it easy for you by having all the drivers you need right there on their website. Search through all their printers and drivers until you find the driver that matches your printer and your operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7).
You will need:
- The model of your printer
- The operating system of your computer
If you do not have time to search through the entire driver, run driver update software and it will find and download the right driver for you.
I Found the Driver, Now What?
Congratulations, you have made it through the hard part. It is simple to reinstall the printer driver .
- First, you need to download the driver to your computer. Downloading it to the desktop will make it easier for the next step.
- Open up Device Manager. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can click start, type in Device Manager and it will pop up under programs. For Windows XP, click Start, Control Panel, right click Systems, select Properties, click Hardware, click Device Manager
- Scroll down to your printer
- Right click the printer and click Update Drivers
- Follow the onscreen instructions to update the driver. If the computer does not automatically find your download, click Browse my computer. Then select browse and navigate to where you downloaded the driver.
There's Got to be an Easier Way
Yes, there is an easier way. However, not everyone wants the easy way, so we provide the manual way for those who want to do it themselves. You can get software that will not only update your printer drivers but will update all your other drivers as well.
Driver update software is the easiest way to reinstall or update your drivers. With a few clicks of the mouse, all the drivers on your computer will be updated and ready to go.
- First, you click Scan My Computer and it will generate a list of all drivers needing updating.
- Then you click download all or select only the drivers you wish to update and the software will download the latest drivers.
- Next, you click Install drivers and the software will automatically install all the drivers for you.