Windows 11-Canon printer problem

Try letting Windows detect it and see if it finds drivers by itself.

Try loading the Windows 10 drivers and see if they work anyway.

Look for the closest printer that does have a W11 driver and see if that will print to your printer.

Finally, last resort, see if it will accept a standard format like PCL or ESC/P2 (the spec doesn't say) and use a generic driver. It'll likely lose some features with the generic driver.

Super last resort, it appears Gutenprint does support it. But there's no Windows version, so you'd need to set up a CUPS print server on a Linux system (VM, WSL, Raspberry Pi, etc) to act as a converter.

Theo

Or just install Linus and get rid of Windows!

Thanks Theo, I tried that first but it couldn't detect it

Will try that when I can, I was in a hurry today had to use my old laptop in the end!

Will try the rest when I have more time Cheers

Not everybody has that option. I've been mostly on Linux since around

My wife uses Windows, again for (old, non-professional) software which only ever came in Windows versions. It's flaky enough as it is, so I'm not even going to think about Wine.

We hit the driver problem more than ten years ago, when we bought a new (reconditioned) 64 bit computer which came with Win7 64 bit, the older computer using Win7 32 bit.

The scanner didn't work, the driver not having been ported to 64 bits. There was no workaround, TWAIN having gone with 64 bits, so my wife had a new scanner, and I inherited the old one, which dated from 2000. It still runs without trouble on sid.

We do still both use scanners, as we have some need for image capture with accurate sizing and geometry, and a wobbly trapezium-shaped mobile phone picture will not do. For some reason, among all the selfie-sticks and other accessories for phones, there seems a distinct lack of affordable rostrum-camera type jigs, for actually getting decent pictures of documents.

Or relegate the old Win10 box to a print server and share the Canon on that.

Set the (W11 browser) download interface to

Version Windows 10 (x64) (detected)

The choice at the bottom is

RECOMMENDED

File Name MP495 series MP Driver Ver. 1.03 (Windows 10/10 x64/8.1/8.1 x64/8/8 x64/7/7 x64/Vista/Vista64 /XP/XP x64)

Type Drivers

Date

File Size

If you go to catalog.update.microsoft.com and enter MP495, there is a set of files as well, but I suspect any more recent ones will not be worth it.

That means, an even older driver, was promoted to do Win10 duty.

It's similar to my HD6450 video card. AMD didn't have to do it, but they generated one driver file for Windows 10, and I actually used that to install W10 22H2 on crusty old equipment. If you find just the right driver, sometimes it is amazing what eras you can span with it.

Paul

Thanks Paul, I did most of that but although the printer was switched on and connected to the laptop by USB, the printer was not detected by the wizard.

When I have a bit more time I will explore further but the easiest thing was to use my previous laptop as a stop gap to get the printing done.