How do I tell if my printer has PCL 5 or 6 or Ghostcript Driver?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I have an HP Laserjet 1018 printer. Currently, HP does not have a Vista
driver for it as yet. It promises that it will release it in the future. In
the meantime, HP says that if its printers use PCL 5 or 6 or Ghostscript
drivers, their XP drivers can be used in Vista. So, how do I tell if my
printer--HP Laserjet 1018--has PCI 5 or 6 or Ghostscript driver?

Through the info on the test page?

I did a test page on my printer. However, nowhere do I see "PCL"!

I am currently dual booting XP and Vista. The printer is working for me
perfectly under XP. Would like to see if it is possible to find a way to
make it work under Vista as well.

Would appreciate those in the know dropping a clue on how or if possible to
make the printer function under Vista!

Thanks!
 
In message <[email protected]>
broccolibeef said:
I have an HP Laserjet 1018 printer. Currently, HP does not have a Vista
driver for it as yet. It promises that it will release it in the future. In
the meantime, HP says that if its printers use PCL 5 or 6 or Ghostscript
drivers, their XP drivers can be used in Vista. So, how do I tell if my
printer--HP Laserjet 1018--has PCI 5 or 6 or Ghostscript driver?
Click to expand...

I spent about 15 minutes looking for that one, I can't find anything
about PCL support, or anything about postscript support.
 
Thanks for digging up the info! I did a search on Google as well. One place
told me that I could do a print to file and then the first line of the print
to file will tell me the language in which the printer works.

However, I get this from the print to file: JZJZ 4 JZJZ

Did a search on Google on this, no sensible result turned up!

As you can see, I am constantly referring to Google here so as to satisfy my
enemies' carping about me--that I do not know how to Google!

I am taking my enemies seriously, in other words.

Might go ahead and test the XP driver for 1018 under Vista to see if it will
work.

Will creat a restore point, of course. So if the worst comes, will restore
the system to an earlier point.

Thanks again for the reply!
 
Thanks to the info that Alan and Sidi provided, I have managed to have HP
Laserjet 1018 work successfully under Vista(32 bit, Ultimate) with the
printer’s XP driver! With some trouble, of course, as you can see below.
Here is what I did, and I list them here for your reference:
1. Download the plug and play XP driver for the printer—1018. I did NOT try
the other, non plug-and-play driver, so I don’t know if it will work under
Vista.
2. Create a restore point in Vista. I guess you know the reason or purpose
for this.
3. Launch or double click the printer’s XP driver saved on some location of
your HD.
4. Installation stalls—or at least has lasted a long time—at the point of
“new printer detected, please wait….†Prior to this, I had chosen the second
or the middle option of “Do not show this message again until I restart or
log on the next time†in the window of “New Hardware Detected.†Don’t know
if this choice had anything to do with the long wait—about 3 minutes—at the
point of “new printer detected, please wait…â€

Tired of the long wait, I finally hit on the Cancel button. My heart was
heavy, believe me, knowing that it was not going to work!

But Vista then asked me whether I would like to reinstall the driver or not.
Thinking that I’ve got nothing to lose, I said yes. So Vista started to
reinstall the printer’s XP driver! And this time, it successfully installed!
5. Rebooting the machine.
6. Upon rebooting the machine, in the system tray area, appeared the icon of
installing driver for new devices. A short moment later, it disappeared. So
I guess it had finished installing the driver for the printer.
7. Going into the Printer folder or tab in Control Panel to print a test
page. The first time I hit the button of printing test page, the printer
made some sound or noise, but no sound came out! Once again, my heart was
heavy! I thought: all this trouble, still a failure! However, the second
time I hit the print test page button, a test page came out, and perfectly!
Wanting to be sure that the printer’s XP driver can indeed work under Vista
for the printer, I hit the print test page for the third time, and a page
came out of the printer, perfectly as well, as perfectly as the test page
under XP!

Still wanting to be sure that the XP driver can work under Vista for this
printer, I further printed some documents—documents ranging from 5 to 10
pages, my 2006 Tax Return, to be exact! And lo and behold: they came out
perfectly as well!!!!

8. Conclusion: the XP driver (plug and play version, not sure about the
other version, as I did not try that version) works for this printer(1018)
under Vista (32 bit). It might give you some trouble, which you can see from
my above description, but if you really know computers, maybe you could avoid
the trouble that I have described above.
I thank, once again, the info that Alan and Sidi have provided. Without the
info they have provided, I probably would have felt less inclined to try the
XP driver for the printer under Vista—because I do not want to mess up my
newly setup Vista system!
I love internet!

Note: I did NOT do any testing on the advanced features of printing:
double-sided printing, for instance, so I don't know if they are available
under Vista with the printer's XP driver.
 
Back
Top