help an idiot install a printer - driver issues

Factual Questions
1

I have XP SP2 and am trying to install an old laser printer (Minolta pagepro QMS 1250E to be precise).

Now I have an installation disk but this is pre XP and seems to be for the 1250W model. Anyway after installation the 1250W appears in printer and faxes. However it just prints semiblank pages when it manages to communicate with a few funny symbols at the top of the page.

Now I did manage to get this printer to work with my old XP computer - I think I put in a dummy printer description file somewhere and it worked but I cant remember what exactly I did.

So I downloaded what is said to be the driver for the1250E (only 63 kb) from drivers.com. (the official minolta ftp site was down when I tried) It is a self extracting file with 4 files

The first file looks promising and is called oemsetup.inf . When clicked note pad comes up witha long text file starting
[Version]
Signature="Windows NT"
Provider=%M1%
ClassGUID={4D36E979-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
CatalogFile=sp601ps.cat
DriverVer=10/20/2001, 5.03.918.0
Class=Printer

[ClassInstall32.NT]
AddReg=printer_class_addreg etct etc

the other three files are labelled sp601ps2k.NTF, sp601ps2k.ppd, and sp601ps.cat

what do I do now?

2

Start->Settings->Printers and Faxes. Click “Add a printer” on the left. Go through the usual motions of installing a local printer. Tell XP not to automatically detect the printer. Click “next” and select the port it will be using. When selecting the device on the next window, click “Have disk…” and then point it to the folder the self-extracting archive created when you ran it (or if it just extracted to the root of the folder you put the SEA in, then locate that one). It should see the INF file when you enter that directory. Double-click on it and it should install.

Assuming that the driver is XP compatible everything should go along normally. If the driver has not passed Windows Logo Certification don’t worry – that’s just Microsoft’s way of getting money from OEMs for writing drivers that are guaranteed to be complaint with the operating system. Just click “Continue anyway” and let it do its thing.

3

hey it works.
thanks Mindfield. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Glad to oblige. :slight_smile:

5

£500 a pop IIRC