7. Devices and Printers

Windows gives you control over the printing system through the Devices and Printers window, which is part of the old desktop-style Control Panel. Here are the easiest ways to get there:

Right-click the Start button or press Windows Logo+X and select Control Panel. Then, under Hardware and Sound, click View Devices and Printers.

In the taskbar’s search box, type printers, and then select Devices and Printers.

There is also a Printers section in the Modern-style Settings app that you reach from the Start menu, but, it has very limited capabilities. Microsoft might improve it in the future, but as it is now, we suggest that you stick to the Devices and Printers screen.

Figure 7.1 shows the Devices and Settings window with all but the Printers section closed. Here, you can see icons for the five print devices on my computer (yours will be somewhat different):

The Brother printer, which is installed directly on the computer. You can see that the printer is being shared with others on the network by the icon with two faces.

The Fax printer. If your computer has a modem with fax capability, or if your organization has a network fax server, the Fax printer lets you send faxes directly from your applications without having to first print a hard copy and then feed it through a fax machine or scanner. Instead, you simply select the Fax printer from inside your application and use the normal print function.

The HP printer, which is connected to a computer named Sulawesi. It is being used through the network. The check mark shows that it’s the default printer.

Microsoft Print to PDF, which lets you create the popular PDF file format from any app that can print. When you use this printer selection, whatever you “print” is saved as a PDF file, which you can then email, share, save or print at later time. This standard, free feature is new in Windows 10, and it’s terrific, if long-overdue.

The Microsoft XPS Document Writer, like Microsoft Print to PDF, also isn’t a printer in the physical sense. This printer selection lets any app that can print save its output as an XPS or Open XPS (.oxps) file. XPS was Microsoft’s attempt to match the PDF file’s popularity. Hardly anyone uses it.

Initially, the window’s menu lists just two choices: Add a Device and Add a Printer. If you click one of the printer icons, additional items appear: See What’s Printing, Manage Default Printers, Print Server Properties, and Remove Device.

You might find that the first time you sign in, one or more printer icons are already present. They can include any or all of the following:

Icons for any printer(s) you have attached to your computer, which were detected by Windows and set up automatically.

Icons for any printer(s) shared by computers attached to your network. Windows might discover and add them automatically. On a corporate network, your network administrator might install them for you.

The Print to a PDF and XPS Document Writer icons, and if you have a fax modem installed, the Fax icon.

In the next section, we show you how to add new printers that don’t appear automatically. The subsequent sections tell you how to manage your printers.

After your printer is installed, if you want to let other users on your network use it, see “Sharing Printers,” p. 479.

Read your printer’s installation manual and follow the instructions for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, or 7. If no instructions are included for these operating systems, look for instructions for Windows Vista or XP.

Plug in the printer. Most printers are detected when you connect them to the computer. Your printer might be found and then configure itself automatically.

If the printer doesn’t configure itself, you can run the Add a Printer Wizard (or use a setup program, if one is supplied with your printer). We go over this procedure in detail in the next section.

If you want, set print defaults pertaining to two-sided printing, scaling, paper source, halftone imaging, ink color, and paper orientation. These will be the default print settings that every Windows application starts with when you select this printer.

Share the printer and specify its share name so that other network users can use your printer.

If you are on a network and want to control who gets to use your printer, set custom access permissions.

Right-click the icon for the printer you’ll be using most often and select the Default Printer option. This way, your printer will be preselected as the printer of choice when you use the Print function of Windows applications.

We discuss these topics in the following sections.

If your printer is connected directly to your computer with a cable, you are installing a local printer. Installing a local printer is covered in the next section.

If you want to use a printer that’s shared by another computer on your network, you still need to set up a printer icon on your own computer. This is called installing a network printer.

To see how to install a network printer, see “Using Printers on the Network,” p. 464.

A printer that’s physically connected to the network itself and not cabled to another computer is called a local printer on a network port, which is somewhat confusing, or a network-attached printer, which makes a little more sense. We cover the installation of these in Chapter 21 also. If you’re in a hurry, try the standard Add Printer procedure we describe in the next section. Windows is pretty smart about finding and using network-attached printers.

Parallel printer port

USB

Network, wireless, or Bluetooth

Serial port (If you still have a serial port printer, you are a true retro-computing geek and I love you.)

Here’s the basic game plan, which works with most printers. You must be signed in to Windows 10 using an Administrator account. Follow these steps:

1. Read the printer’s installation instructions specific to Windows 10, 8.1, 8, or 7. If no instructions are included for these operating systems, look for Windows Vista or XP instructions. You might be instructed to install software before connecting the printer to your computer the first time. This is especially important if your printer connects via USB.

2. If the printer uses a cable, connect the printer to the appropriate port on your computer according to the printer manufacturer’s instructions.

3. Locate the type of connection that your printer uses in the following list, as directed:

USB—Install any driver programs provided by your manufacturer, and then connect the printer’s USB cable to your computer. Windows will detect it and automatically start the Add a Device Wizard. Follow the instructions onscreen to finish installing the printer.

Network, wireless, or Bluetooth—If your printer can be directly attached to your network, connect it and then click Add a Printer in the Devices and Printers window. If Windows finds the printer, select it and click Next. Otherwise, follow the printer manufacturer’s specific instructions.

If you are using a wireless network or Bluetooth, be sure that your computer’s wireless or Bluetooth adapter is turned on and enabled. On some laptops, they are switched off by default to conserve power.

Parallel port—Connect the printer to your computer’s parallel port. Windows should detect and install the printer. If it doesn’t, see the next section.

Serial port—Many barcode, label, and point-of-sale receipt printers use a serial data connection. Serial printers must be set up manually. The next section describes how.

If Windows can’t automatically detect the make and model of your printer, it will ask you to assist in selecting the appropriate type. If you can’t find your printer’s make and model in the list of choices, see “What to Do If Your Printer Isn’t Listed,” later in this chapter.

When your printer is installed and working, you might want to skip ahead to the section titled “Changing a Printer’s Properties” to see ways that you can configure your printer to make it easier to use.

1. Open the Devices and Printers window as described at the beginning of this chapter. At the top of the Devices and Printers window, select Add a Printer.

2. If your printer does not appear within 20 seconds or so, click The Printer That I Want Isn’t Listed. Select Add a Local Printer or Network Printer with Manual Settings, and then click Next.

If you are connecting to a printer that’s directly hooked up to your computer, select Use an Existing Port, and proceed to step 3.

If you intend to send output directly to a computer that’s attached to your network, use the Create a New Port option instead. For a discussion of this option, see “Using Unix and LPR Printers,” p. 466. After the port information has been set up, continue with the following step.

3. Select the port to which the printer is connected. The usable choices are as follows:

LPT1:, LPT2:, LPT3:—These are parallel port connections. Most computers have only one parallel port connection, LPT1, if they have one at all. These ports will still appear in the list even if your computer doesn’t have them—so be careful.

COM1: through COM4:—If you know your printer is of the serial variety, it’s probably connected to COM1 or COM2. If COM1 is tied up for use with some other device, such as a modem, use COM2.

File—If you select this port, when you subsequently print a document, you will be prompted for the name of a file into which the printer commands will be stored. The main use for this option is with a PostScript printer driver, to create a file for submission to a print shop.

After selecting the correct port, click Next.

4. Select the manufacturer and model of your printer in the next dialog box, as shown in Figure 7.2. You can quickly jump to a manufacturer’s name by pressing the first letter of the name, such as H for HP. Then use the up- and down-arrow keys to home in on the correct one.

If you can’t find the appropriate model, you have three choices:

If you have an Internet connection, click Windows Update to see whether Microsoft has a driver available. This might work.

Get the manufacturer’s driver on a CD/DVD or download it via the Internet, open or run the downloaded file to expand its files, and then click Have Disk. Locate the driver (look for an INF file, which is an information file that points to the correct driver files, and click OK.

Choose a similar, compatible model and risk getting less-than-perfect output. This option can often be successful with dot-matrix printers and older inkjet and laser printers, but is less likely to work with modern cheap inkjet or laser printers that have no internal processing “smarts.”

For more information on dealing with unlisted printers, see the next section, “What to Do If Your Printer Isn’t Listed.”

If the wizard finds that the appropriate driver is already installed on your machine, you can elect to keep it or replace it. The choice is up to you. If you think the replacement is newer and will be better, go for it. By contrast, if no driver is listed, you might be prompted to install it or insert a disk from the vendor. On the whole, drivers downloaded directly from the manufacturer’s website tend to be better and more full-featured than the default ones provided with Windows, so your best bet is to download the most recent driver version. Avoid downloading from any site other than the original manufacturer’s, though, because third-party sites often deliver software laden with viruses.

After you select a printer manufacturer and model, click Next.

5. By default, the printer is named using its full model name. You can change or shorten it if you like. Then click Next.

6. By default, the printer is not shared on your network. You can elect to share the printer, and you can adjust the sharing name if you like. It’s best to keep the share name to no more than 31 characters if you want to share the printer with older computers or non-Windows devices. To help other users identify the printer, you can also type in a location and a comment.

To read more about signed and unsigned drivers, see “Configuring Windows to Ignore Unsigned Device Drivers,” p. 662.

If you do not want to share the printer, click Do Not Share This Printer. Then click Next.

7. If you want this printer to be your default (primary) printer, check Set As the Default Printer.

If you want to be sure the printer is working, click Print a Test Page; otherwise, click Finish.

A User Account Control prompt may appear, confirming that you want to install the driver.

When you’re finished, the icon for the printer appears in your Devices and Printers window.

If you later want to share the new printer with other users on your network, see “Sharing Printers,” p. 479.

If you have just set up a printer that’s connected to a serial (COM) port, right-click the printer’s icon and select Printer Properties. Select the Ports tab, highlight the correct COM port line (which should be checked), and click Configure Port. Select the proper data transfer rate in bits per second (baud rate), data bits, parity, stop bits, and flow control. The settings must exactly match those used by the printer. For most serial printers, these settings will be 9600, 8, None, 1, and Xon/Xoff, respectively. Finally, click OK to save the changes.

If your printer is set up and working now, you can skip ahead to the section “Changing a Printer’s Properties.”

First, your printer probably came with a disc containing driver software. In the Add Printer dialog box (refer to Figure 7.2), click Have Disk and then click Browse to find the Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, or Vista driver files for your printer. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows 10, you might also be able to use a driver designed for Windows XP. If there are separate folders for 64-bit and 32-bit drivers, choose the one appropriate for your copy of Windows. Select the appropriate INF file and click OK.

The Windows Update button lets Windows download additional printer drivers from Microsoft, and this may well obtain the correct driver for you.

If Windows Update doesn’t help, your next step should be to visit the printer manufacturer’s website. Check out the Product Support section, and look for a way to locate and download drivers. If you can find an appropriate driver, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for downloading it. It will probably come as a compressed or executable file that has to be expanded or run, and this will put the installation files into a folder on your hard drive. You can then use the Have Disk feature (discussed earlier) to point Windows to this folder. If you cannot locate a downloadable Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, or Vista driver set, you could try a Windows XP driver; however, doing so is a gamble and is unlikely to work on a 64-bit version of Windows.

If neither Microsoft nor the manufacturer provides a driver, hope is fading. Still, some off-brand printers or models are designed to be compatible with one of the popular printer types, such as the Apple LaserWriters, HP LaserJets, or one of the Epson series. Also, many printer models are very similar and can use the same driver (with mostly correct results). Check the product manual or manufacturer’s website to see whether your printer supports an emulation mode. This workaround might help you identify an alternative printer model, and you can try its driver.

Assuming that you have obtained a printer driver, follow these instructions to install it:

1. If you obtained a driver by downloading it from the Internet, run the downloaded file. This either installs the driver directly or expands or unzips a set of files into a location on your hard disk. Take note of the location.

2. Follow steps 1 through 4 in the preceding section.

3. Click the Have Disk button.

4. You’re now prompted to insert a disk. Click the Browse button. If you downloaded the driver, locate the folder in which the driver files were expanded or unzipped. If you have a CD, insert the CD, wait a few moments, and then browse to the driver files on the CD.

The wizard is looking for a file with an .inf extension, which is a file type that describes to Windows what components, files, and settings the driver installs and is provided with all drivers. You might have to hunt around a bit to find a folder with drivers for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, or XP.

5. After you locate the folder with INF files, click OK. You might have to choose a printer model from a list if multiple options exist.

6. Continue through the wizard dialog boxes, as explained in the previous section.

If you right-click a printer’s icon in Devices and Printers, you will see several choices. The different sets of printer properties and preferences each serve a different purpose.

Printing Preferences—These are the default settings that each application will start with when you use an application’s Print function. They include paper size, page orientation, and paper source. Although most applications let you make changes for an individual document, if you find that you have to keep adjusting the same settings every time you print, change the printer’s Printing Preferences. This way, each application starts with those selections as the default.

Preferences are per-user settings. Each computer user can set his or her own printing preferences.

Printer Properties—These are settings that apply to the printer itself, most of which tell Windows how to communicate with the printer, what capabilities and optional features it has, and so on. Printer properties also include settings that determine the initial Printing Preferences for each user.

Properties—This one is fairly useless. It’s just there because of the way that Devices and Printers is organized. (It is useful for other device types, however.) This takes a little getting used to, because in previous versions of Windows, to configure a printer you would right-click its icon and select Properties. In Windows 10, you have to use the other two choices just mentioned.

When you select a printer’s icon, the Print Server Properties selection appears at the top of the Devices and Printers window. This leads to settings that apply to all printers used by the computer, including paper size and form definitions.

We describe the most general and common options in the following sections. Those relating to network printer sharing are covered in Chapter 21.

To change your personal printing preferences for a particular printer, open Devices and Printers as described at the beginning of this chapter. Right-click the printer icon and select Printing Preferences. The number of tabs and the choices they offer vary widely from printer to printer. Table 7.1 describes them in general terms.

If you want to change a printer’s default preferences for all users, view its Printer Properties, as described in the next section, and click Printing Defaults on the Advanced tab. This brings up what looks like the Printing Preferences dialog box, but these settings will become the default settings for all users. Users can then customize their printing preferences from that starting point.

A printer’s Properties dialog box can have any of several tabs. Table 7.2 shows the general breakdown. Again, the tabs you’ll see can vary depending on the capabilities of your printer.

For more details about printer sharing, printer pooling, and other server-related printing issues, see Chapter 21.

The Print Server Properties dialog box is covered in Chapter 21 because it’s mainly a networking topic.

The physical printer has been removed from service.

You don’t want to use a particular network printer anymore.

You have several definitions of a physical printer using different default settings, and you want to remove one of them.

You have a nonfunctioning or improperly functioning printer setup and want to remove it and start over by running the Add a Printer Wizard.

In any of these cases, the approach is the same:

1. Be sure you are signed in with Administrator privileges.

2. Open the Devices and Printers window, as described at the beginning of this chapter.

3. Be sure nothing is in the printer’s queue. You have to cancel all jobs in the printer’s queue before deleting the printer. If you don’t, Windows will try to delete all jobs in the queue for you, but it isn’t always successful.

4. Right-click the printer icon you want to delete, and then choose Remove Device.

5. Windows will ask you to confirm that you want to delete the printer. Click Yes. The printer icon or window disappears from the Devices and Printers window.

The ability to print from Modern apps is not always available. Some apps can print, some can’t, and some print only under certain circumstances. The default Map app, for example, lets you print directions, but it doesn’t let you print a copy of a displayed map. Sometimes a small printer icon appears at the left edge of the app, but in some apps you must select an icon that offers hidden additional choices, usually an ellipsis (...) or as an icon that appears as three horizontal lines, one above the other, at the top right or left corner of the window. The setup is left up to each app’s developer, and unfortunately, there is no consensus among developers to do it any one particular way, even within Microsoft. (I’m a little peeved about this. You will be, too.)

For desktop applications that use the ribbon interface, again, the Print function could be anywhere, either as a ribbon button or in a drop-down menu. The current trend is to provide a list of ribbon titles across the top of the app window, with the first entry named File. Typically, you can click on that and then select Print.

Desktop-style applications that use the traditional pull-down menu system almost universally have File as the first menu item and Print as a selection under that.

However you reach it, the Print menu selection usually displays a Print dialog box that lets you select a printer. Usually, a button next to the printer selection list is labeled Preferences. This button lets you change the orientation of the printing on the page, the paper source, and so on. The settings are the same as discussed in “Printing Preferences” in this chapter, except, here, you’re changing the settings just for one particular document in one application.

If an application doesn’t provide a way to select a specific printer, the default printer is used. To choose which printer you’d like to use as the default, open the Devices and Printers window, right-click a printer’s icon, and select Set As Default Printer. A green check mark appears to show which printer is the default.

When you print from a Windows application, it generates commands and data that tell the printer to form letters and images on a page. Applications generally produce these much faster than a printer can consume them, so the work is done in two separate steps. As an application generates print commands, the Windows Print Spooler service spools the output. Here, spooling refers to a process in which the output of an application is stored on disk or in RAM and then fed to an output device at the device’s own pace. The application then turns its attention back to you while the Print Spooler plays back the list of commands to the printer. The Print Spooler can coordinate individual printouts (called jobs) from possibly several applications and users at once, and feeds the output to the assigned printer(s) one at a time. We talk about managing queued print jobs in the next section.

Windows 10 can also create an additional document file type called XPS, which stands for XML Paper Specification. XPS was Microsoft’s attempt to create a free alternative to PDF, but it never gained much traction.

You can generate PDF or XPS documents by following these steps:

1. Edit and format a document in one of your applications. Be sure to save the document in the application’s native format so that you can come back and change it later. You can’t edit a PDF or XPS file. (Not easily, anyway, and not without losing a lot of the organizational structure in the original document.)

2. Use the application’s Print function. Set the printer to Microsoft Print to PDF or Microsoft XPS Document Writer, as desired. Click Print.

3. When the Save Print Output As dialog box appears, select a location and name for the PDF or XPS document.

If you are using Microsoft XPS Document Writer, the default output format is actually Open XPS, a variation of XPS that uses the .oxps file extension. If you are going to share the resulting document with users running Windows XP, 7, or Vista, change the output format to Microsoft XPS, with extension .xps, because these operating systems can’t display Open XPS documents.

You can now distribute the PDF, Microsoft XPS, or Open XPS document to others to view and print as desired.

Windows 10, 8.1, and 8 use the preinstalled Reader app to view PDF files, but it is rather limited. On most computers, regardless of operating system, you will probably want to download the Acrobat Viewer program from http://get.adobe.com/reader. (Alternatively, you might want to install a more full-featured PDF creating, viewing, and editing tool such as Adobe Acrobat.)

In addition, Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, and Vista have a pre-installed XPS document viewer. On these versions of Windows, just double-click an XPS file to open and view it. You can download XPS support for Windows XP from Microsoft.com; search for “Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack.” There are also XPS viewers for Apple’s iOS and OS X, Android, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems.

To send a fax from Windows 10, set up the fax service as described in Chapter 12, “Scanning and Faxing.” Then create a document using your favorite application, click Print, and select Fax as the printer. Windows will ask you for the fax phone number and make the call—no paper is involved. The fax service can even add a cover sheet to your document on the way out. You can attach additional documents to an outgoing fax, so you don’t need to send a group of documents in several separate phone calls.

If you try this, however, you’ll quickly find that the Print Manager will beep, pop up messages to tell you about the missing printer, and otherwise make your life miserable. To silence it, open the Devices and Printers window, as described at the beginning of this chapter. Right-click your printer’s icon and select See What’s Printing. Then, in the window that opens, click Printer, Use Printer Offline. The printer’s icon will turn a light-gray color to show that it has been set for offline use, and Windows will now quietly and compliantly queue up anything you “print.” It just won’t try to send it to the printer.

Just don’t forget that you’ve done this, or else nothing will print out even when you’ve reconnected your printer. You’ll end up yelling at your unresponsive printer, when it’s only doing what it was told. When you’ve reconnected the printer, repeat the preceding steps and uncheck Use Printer Offline. This is a nifty feature, but it’s available only for local printers, not printers shared by other computers.

Open Devices and Printers, as described at the beginning of this chapter, right-click the printer’s icon, and select See What’s Printing.

Alternatively, double-click the icon. If you’re using a network printer shared by another computer, you’ll then have to click See What’s Printing.

For a local printer attached to your computer, when there are active jobs, an icon appears in the desktop’s notification area, near the clock. Hover the mouse pointer over it to see the number of documents waiting to print. Right-click it and select the printer’s name to display the queue.

Figure 7.5 shows a sample printer’s queue window. The window displays the status of the printer (in the title bar) and the documents that are queued up, including their size, status, owner, pages, date submitted, and so on.

If you’re looking at the print queue for a printer that’s shared by another computer on your network, the screen won’t update itself very frequently. Press F5 or select View, Refresh to see the most up-to-date information.

If you’re trying to delete the job that’s currently printing, it might take awhile to disappear from the list.

By default, all users can pause, resume, restart, and cancel the printing of their own documents. If you want to manage documents printed by other users, your user account must have the Manage Documents privilege for the printer. If Windows says you don’t have permission to perform some function, such as deleting a document from the queue or changing printer settings, in most cases you can right-click the document or printer and select Run As Administrator to perform the operation with elevated privileges. From the pop-up menu, select the task you were trying to perform and then try again.

Alternatively, a Computer Administrator user can edit the printer’s Security properties to give your account Manage Documents permission. We discuss this shortly.

If you have a printer’s queue window open, you can also select Printer, Cancel All Documents from that window’s menu.

To pause an individual print job, in the printer’s queue window, right-click the document name and choose Pause. The word Paused then appears on the document’s line under Status. The printer might not stop immediately. First, Windows won’t stop sending data until it has reached the end of a page. Second, the printer might have one or more pages already in its memory, and it will finish printing them unless you take the printer offline. Third, Windows might go on and start sending pages for the next job in the print queue. When you’re ready to resume printing, right-click the job in question and choose Resume.

In some situations, you might need to pause all the jobs on your printer so that you can add paper to it, alter the printer settings, or just quiet the printer while you take a phone call. To pause all jobs, open the printer’s queue window and choose Printer, Pause Printing. (Again, the printer might not stop immediately; it will continue to print any pages already in its memory.) To start up the printer again, uncheck Pause Printing.

If you need to (because of a paper jam or other botch), you can restart a printing document from the beginning. Just right-click the document and choose Restart.

To control who has permission to use and/or manage a printer, see “Setting Printer Permissions,” p. 480.

To change the disk drive on which Windows stores (spools) printer data that’s waiting to be sent to printers, see “Changing the Location of the Spool Directory,” p. 480.

To connect multiple printers to one queue in a high-print-volume environment, see “Printer Pooling,” p. 481.

In addition, Windows 10 comes with a printer management tool that’s part of the Windows Management Console system. It’s intended primarily for network administrators who sometimes have to manage dozens of printers spread around an office. We don’t go into great detail on this tool here because it’s fairly self-explanatory, but we show you how it works.

To run the tool, in the taskbar’s search box type admin. From the results, select Administrative Tools. Then double-click Print Management. (Alternatively, at the command prompt, type printmanagement.) You might need to confirm the User Account Control prompt or enter an Administrator password because this tool requires elevated privileges.

The left pane lets you choose views that include lists of all the printers installed on the local computer (or on a domain network), all printers that have documents pending, and so on. You can also create custom “filters” to select only printers with specific attributes.

Under the Print Servers section, the local computer is listed, and you can right-click the “Print Servers” title to add the names of other computers on your network (or named print server devices). You can use this feature to build a single panel that lists all your organization’s printers. Print servers that you add to this list will remain in the list the next time you run the printer management tool.