Learn Your Printer and Printers Drivers

Most people are not concerned about printer and printers components as long as the parts don't start giving trouble. Whether you have HP, IBM, Okidata, Samasung or Lexmark printer and Printers, all have some features in common. This article illuminates some basic information on printer drivers. Go through it carefully, and you will be able to find solutions to your printer problems, especially the ones related to printer drivers.

Printer Drivers

A printer driver is the software that drives a printer. Whenever you connect a printer to your system, the driver for it needs to be installed and configured. It is only after this that your printer can accept assignments from the computer. In case of plug-and-play Printer and Printers, most of which are connected to the computer through a USB port, you don't have to do anything to install the driver.

Driver Related Problems

There are a number of problems that can be ascribed to a faulty or incompatible driver. The most common cause to them might be an outdated driver software. Following are a few of them:

The obtained printout is covered by solid black boxes.

When printing and operating, the system reports an error, the program crashes.

Appearance of nonsensical characters.

The last character or last few characters on every line aren't printed.

Possible Solutions

If any of the above issues show up, you can consider using one of the following solutions to circumvent the problem:

Manufacturers of hardware components keep on adding new features to the hardware drivers. You can ask the manufacturer of your printer to provide you with an updated printer driver.

You can also try using a different printer driver that is more compatible with your printer.

If you don't want to change your printer driver, you can try simplifying the format of the document you want to print. However, if it the present format is indispensable for some purpose, you will have to consider one of the above two options.

Driver Roll-Back

Sometimes, you may experience trouble after changing or updating a printer driver. Your system's performance might be degraded, or your Printer and Printers components may stop functioning. Don't panic. Windows XP and Server 2003, and may be even some earlier versions of Windows (I have tested only these two), offer you an opportunity to rollback the printer driver to the previous version if the newer one causes trouble.