Ever get stuck with the screen below? Where you want to install a printer but can’t find the driver .inf only an executable bundled with various vendor software you don’t want installing or perhaps the bundled software won’t detect your printer so you need to enter these manually.

Installing Your Printer Driver

Not a problem. Like a .zip file an .exe is a compressed file containing several other files and whats more we can open an executable, with a program such as 7-zip, to extract individual files. In our case we will want to extract the driver for the printer.

The first task is to locate and download the required driver from the vendors website.

A printer may have various different flavours of Printer Control Language drivers available. It’s important to select the correct driver to prevent issues down the line. Some common types include PCL5, PCL6 and PS.

PCL5 comes in various flavours of Printer Control Languages PCL5 is the oldest printer language, used only in Networks that are UNIX-based. PCL5C are also an older printer language, but written for Colour Printers. PCL5E is the latest release of this printer language and allows for a greater DPI (Dots per Inch). PCL5 may be required for some older applications to print correctly.

PCL6 is a relatively new printer language and is becoming more popular.

PS (PostScript) drivers are used for high quality printing.

After we have downloaded our executable file containing the driver we need the next step is to open the file with 7-zip. You can do this either by launching the software and opening the archive or right-click on your file and select: 7-zip > Open archive.

Extract the .inf file to a location of your choice, I tend to settle for a self-explanatory location such as C:\drivers\printers\ simply encase I want to use the driver again at a later date.

Now select the driver within the windows printer installer and continue your installation