Specifications

Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000 Driver Installation
Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 include a wizard for installing printer
drivers that walks you through the entire process. The procedure in Windows 3.1 is fundamentally
the same, although the screens are somewhat different in appearance. When you click the Add Printer
icon in the Printers Control Panel, the wizard first asks whether you are installing a driver for a
printer connected to the local machine or to the network. You then select the manufacturer of your
printer and the specific model.
The operating systems include a comprehensive selection of printer drivers and a Have Disk button
that enables you to install drivers you have obtained from the manufacturer of your printer or from
other sources.
After selecting the printer type, you specify the port to which the printer is attached. The available
COM and LPT ports installed on your system are listed. The FILE option enables you to save print jobs
to disk files.
The wizard also asks whether you intend to use the printer with DOS applications. If you answer yes,
the wizard configures your system to redirect all output sent to the LPT1 printer port to the printer
driver. This is necessary when you are configuring a network printer because DOS applications usually
do not have support for network printing.
After you specify whether you want to make the new printer your default Windows printer, the wiz-
ard creates a new icon in the Printers Control Panel. This makes the printer available to all your
Windows applications and provides access to the printer’s Properties dialog box, which you can use to
configure the driver and manipulate your print jobs.
Tip
If you want the best performance and most features for your printer, use the printer driver provided by the manufacturer on
the setup CD-ROM or disks, or downloaded it from the manufacturer’s Web site. The driver provided on the Windows
CD-ROM is often very limited in its features and might prevent you from getting the most out of your printer.
USB Printer Drivers for Windows 98/Me/2000
Microsoft provides the following USB printer driver files with these versions of Windows:
■
Usbprint.sys
■ Usbmon.dll
Ideally, all USB printers will use these drivers along with any additional drivers provided by the
printer vendor to support a particular printer. If you install a new USB printer and your existing USB
printer stops working, your existing USB printer most likely used its own drivers rather than these
drivers. Contact the printer vendor for an updated driver that uses these files.
Driver Signing
In an attempt to control the quality of device drivers for Windows, Windows 98/Me/2000 checks
device drivers during installation for a digital signature indicating that the device driver has been
approved by Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). Unsigned drivers for printers and
most other hardware classes can be installed in place of digitally signed drivers, but the user is warned
that the driver hasn’t been digitally signed by WHQL. Drivers installed from the Windows CD-ROM
that either are used to support devices installed in a new system or are installed by Windows Update
are digitally signed, but drivers downloaded directly from the device manufacturer might not be, espe-
cially when first introduced.