Hi guys, I was wondering what the situation was as regards built in drivers for printers in windows. Do you have to get drivers from the manufacturer or does windows have either: 1) Built in drivers for some models (provided by the manufacturer) 2) A generic driver for basic functionality just like say for SATA or USB mass storage devices? Renoir
Short story is that 95% of the time, it's able to detect what piece of hardware you have and then download the driver for you. I assume you ask because you have a printer you need to install but not the disc it came with containing the driver? - Diosjenin -
This. And I want to point out that it really is only for really few devices, and only for devices that were released before that version of Windows.
Sorry for the late reply. The reason I ask is because I'm house sitting for my brother and his PC has died on me so I needed to connect my laptop direct to his printer. I downloaded the driver from the lexmark site but the process caused me to wonder what the deal was with drivers. I was hoping that windows had a built in generic driver for printing basic stuff like text and word docs similar to how windows has built in drivers for UAA compliant hardware. As for your 95% comment that's unfortunately not been my experience. By what process do drivers become available on windows update. Is it simply the case that all WHQL certified drivers are made available through windows update if the relevant device is connected? Yeah I'm running vista home premium 32 bit and when I connected the printer (lexmark X5470) it couldn't find a driver. Renoir
Just thought I'd post the following question again to see if anyone knows the answer: By what process do drivers become available on windows update. Is it simply the case that all WHQL certified drivers are made available through windows update if the relevant device is connected? Renoir
