Printer driver installation

[Stefan Blankenagel]

Hi,

I want to give the customer a possibility to install a printer driver for his
printer. Maybe from the printer CD or downloaded from the internet. But I
have some problems if no printers are included in the image.

Following components are included:
* Local Printing
* Client Printing

But if I want to install my HP Deskjet 3325 - I downloaded the driver from
the hp-page - he asks for a file srgb.icm. This is not included into my image
but it is in the drivers.cab on a normal windows XP CD. But even if the file
is located on the disk he cannot add the printer to windows XPe. The same
problem is for a network printer from Kyocera. The system hangs after the
system starts searching for entered path.

I want to keep my image small. So I don't want to include all printers that
are available in the target designer.

greetz
Stefan

 

[dferencz]

Stefan,

I have found printer driver installation to be very tricky in XPe. In
addition to the "normal" components you might expect to need, there are
often other things you would never expect (e.g., my Canon photo
printers require Terminal Services, which requires Winlogon, etc.!!)

I recommend you examine the log files carefully after attempting an
install (Setupapi.log and FBA.log). They will indicate when the
install process is unable to locate a file. If you want a small image,
you will have to continue to add the needed components, one at a time,
until the install completes successfully.

You may also be able to "tweak" the printer INF files to remove
unecessary files (help files, wizards, etc.) This can reduce your
footprint dramatically. (HP is particularly guilty of "driver bloat":
I previously used an HP Photosmart printer, which had a "standard"
install size of over 25MB!) Again, you will have to perform a
"trial-and-error" process of changing the install files, then repeating
the installation and verifying that everything works.

HTH,

-- Don