Dell Printer work with a non Dell PC?

BopNiblets

My neighbour got a new one and donated their older Dell printer (J740 model) and I can't get it to work on my home built machine.

Installed the drivers easily and everything checks out until I click "Print", then this happens:

Obviously none of the magic Dell cable tricks work :rolleyes:

So what's the dealio Dell? Am I missing something?

Ruu_Old

Dodgy USB cable perhaps? I can't think of much else.

papu

maybe its casue its old? dell printers usually work with everything else

BopNiblets

My Epson Stylus 400 is even older and that works!
I had them both installed so I uninstalled the Epson now, but still no joy, the error message comes up immediately.

Hmm, the neighbours kept their cable (since their new one strangely didn't come with a new USB cable...) so I got another one from my uncle (same cable from a Dell printer, surely they're all the same?)

I'll see if it works with my old Gateway 2000 (lol) machine.

Stephen

Printers not coming with cables sadly is not strange these days. They'll do anything to get you to spend an extra few quid.

colly10

Who manafactured the printer doesn't matter, just as long as you've got the right drivers for your os.
Try this remove the driver completly.
No rather than install the driver direct from the disk, plug in the printer and when the new hardware wizard comes up select have disk and let it find the driver.
Reboot and hope for the best.

Another advantage of using this method is that it'll let you know whether your USB cable actually works

Anti

IT sounds to me that this is a driver conflict. I think the epson driver hkey is still in the registery.

Navigate your registery, and remove any entires from epson. Then remove the dell driver. Reboot, and install from the cd, not from the hardware wizard. Also make sure your copy of win xp (if you use it) is up to date with sp2, and all the updates.

And on a side note, borrow your neighbours cable, try all the other usb ports too.

BopNiblets

Heh, I was too lazy to get the driver CD off of them, so I downloaded the printer driver from the Dell website.
I'll check the registry and that other stuff too.

BopNiblets

Ok, none of that worked, so I tried it with my old Gateway 2000 PC, which I have set up as a temporary media centre, and lo and behold, it worked the first time!!

I'm officially stumped, WTF Dell? Just... WTF!

thebman

It could just be the order you installed the driver and connected the printer in. Sometimes windows will set it as an unrecognised advice and then installing the driver will do nothing as windows doesn't cope on that the Dell printer driver is for the Dell printer.

You can uninstall the driver from device manager and just try reinstall it again.

BopNiblets

I've reinstalled them a few times now, from the CD, from drivers I downloaded, I tried switching USB cables, I tried plugging it into a power socket that wasn't surge protected like it suggested but it still gives me that damn communication error.
The USB ports works, the cables work, the printer works, just not with this freakin PC!

I actually tried installing Lexmark printer drivers for it (since it's a rebranded Lexmark model, but I don't know which model) and I actually got further than with the Dell drivers!
The paper actually went through the printer but nothing was printed on it (although I could hear the print head go back and forth!)

Amazing.

ednwireland

did you plug the printer in before installing the drivers seen this on some hp printers (completly fcked up if you plug the printer in first) uninstall the printer drivers reboot then install the drivers then plug i the printer all i can suggest. try a different usb port ?