Ok, say I have a old printer that works just fine but I no longer have the install disk or anything.
I want to use the printer with a different machine and it sees it but good old Win-98se Plug n Play says I have to have the drivers as she no got.
So, can I save the drivers to a floppy or CD and or where would the installation stuff be or does that get auto-deleted?
I like to have all equipment disks and paper work with each puter but…
Can I do this?
If I understand, you’re missing the install disk? Most drivers are available on the internet for download, just search for “printer name” + drivers
But if you’re asking to get original install disks, that might be a bit harder to round up, and you will probably gain very little for your trouble.
Drivers can usually be found here. You will have to register to download. Save to CD or another medium as desired.
So there is no way to find the drivers on the machine that the printer is working with right now?
No way to list drivers on a machine?
No part of the system where drivers are normally stored?
Sure seems like planned obsoleteness to the Nth degree to me… ::; sigh :::
*:: I would thing that some geek would have the knowledge of where drivers are stored on a working machine… :: *
WAIT:::::::
Maybe I was not clear…
I have more than one machine…
Printer is working on #1 in the house…
I want to hook to machine #2 in the garage…
#2 needs the drivers …
Can I get them from #1…?
Very old and can’t find the drivers online…
???
So something every computer has to have and they are only good for one time? And can not be ever located in the machine again and saved?
???
Shirley not…
I’m using 98 SE and if I go into the Control Panel > System > Device Manager I find the information for my printer (in my case it’s listed under the Dot4Usb category).
If I highlight the printer name, click on Properties, then the Driver tab, and finally the Driver File Details button on the bottom of the Properties screen, the drivers the printer is using are listed there, with complete paths and all.
Hope this helps 
I am not sure why you want to copy the driver. I might be able to do it but I work in IT and it might still cause problems. You may not need to download any driver. Just go to the Control-Panel- Printer-Add Printer and use the wizard but tell it you want to select your own driver. Windows already has a ton printer drivers already installed. There is a good chance it will either have yours or have one that is similar. Printer drivers often don’t need to be an exact match. A similar printer from the same brand will sometimes work. Barring that, download it.
You can actually just squirt drivers across from one machine to another. With certain limitations.
For example: The printer is currently installed on one machine and you want it installed on another that has never seen the driver disk:
-Network the two computers using Windows Networking
-Share the printer on the machine that currently has the drivers#
-Add the printer (browsing the netowork for it) on the machine that does not have the drivers. The driver files will automatically be copied across the network as the printer is installed.
-Move the printer to the new machine and install it as a local printer.
Limitations: generally doesn’t work well, if at all, if the two OSes are different. you might get away with Win98 to WinME. You might get away with WinNT or Win2K to WinXP. On XP (possibly others too) it is possible to cache a variety of different driver versions so that they can be served to a wider range of OSes when the printer is shared, but this is not something that typically gets set up automatically.
For most printers it is just easier to hit the web site of the manufacturer. Only twice have I run into a problem with this. Once in the early nineties with Canon, they demanded registration and serial number of the unit, and more recently an OkiData wide carriage dot matrix, no drivers were available for XP. We had to load up an old machine with WIN 98 to make it work. Downloading new drivers is your best bet. We usually throw away the disks that come with the printers, and download drivers anyway. The disks which come with the machine have all kinds of “Features” that are unwanted, by down loading the latest version you get a much cleaner install.
Not always handy to have Enet cards for networking and I am interested in other equipment besides printers, some are no longer in business and I want to keep using becasue they ain’t broke and I’m staying with 98se for a while yet…
Yeah, that seems to give me a chance. Yhanks
Happy to help, if indeed I did. I truly didn’t think of the potential problem Mangetout mentioned, but hopefully if you’re moving to a different machine with the same OS, it will work fine.
Good luck!
What is the printer make and model # ?
I have the disk for this printer. I just used a ‘printer’ as an example of what I was trying to do with external peripherals. How to find the drivers on old equipment.
Thanks…