Why can't my lappie see my printer

[therustyone]

I had to restore my Sony Vista Laptop PCG-3D1M from its 3-DVD system backup a couple of weeks ago due to a complete crash, these crashes happen every couple of years. Now it won't detect a Dell USB 1100 laser printer which u sed to work before. It goes ding-dong when plugged in, but gets no further . The printer still works fine with other various computers so it seems OK , and the Sony still works OK with a Canon USB color printer and periphera ls like mice so its USB ports seem OK.

I also tried adding a 4-port powered USB hub in case it was a power problem , but that doesn't make it work either. So its a particular conflict betwe en one printer and one computer. I have restored the complete system like this a couple of times previously and never had a problem with the printer. There are no USB fault indications in device manager.

Any ideas?

thanks

rusty

[T i m]

Sounds like it needs some more software. What do you see in the printers section in Control Panel?

Try the auto-detect function here:

Or download the drivers directly: (You didn't say if your Vista was 32 or 64 bit. Check 'System' in Control Panel to find out.

No, that probably wouldn't help in this case.

Could it be the Windows update found the driver before you noticed previously?

That sounds encouraging.

Just the above so far. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mmm now if it were linux it would be easier to diagnose.

Do you need to reinstall printer drivers? If its going 'ding dong' then its detecting the USB hardware, but that doesn't mean it has a device driver that corresponds to it..

[Martin Brown]

Not a great advert for either Sony laptops or Vista but then Vista always was a dog (although nowhere near as bad as it was painted).

The most likely cause of this sort of behaviour is that the Dozy registry has got itself in a tangle for this specific USB device. The simplest fix is to uninstall the printer from the failing machine, reboot the PC and then reinstall again from a clean slate.

You could go into the registry with a flint axe and hack the broken misconfigured details but it is error prone and capable of bringing the system to its knees if you make the slightest error. Vista was prone to spontaneously corrupting its register leaving devices that would connect OK and go bleep with drivers "installed" but not be usable.

My HP scanner used to fail with monotonous regularity on Vista after any kind of wake up from sleep event.

Upgrade to a Win7 machines whilst you still can. Avoid Win8.x at all costs. Win10 isn't too bad either.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Remove the printer USB lead.

In control panel device manager there is a way to show hidden or disconnected device drivers, which if you enable (see google) and then select from the window menu "view devices by connection", you may get to see a phantom (greyed out) of your printer's USB driver. Uninstall that and then try installing your printer again.

The other thing is to check / change your USB cables are good quality. Some of the very thin long types will behave as if the electrons have climbed out of the lazy side of bed and bing-bong might be all that you can get...