Date: 09/14/07 (Microsoft Windows)    Keywords: programming, software, web, microsoft

OK, a bit of background. I've mostly been an apple user my whole life. I'm relatively competent in unix and I know a few programming languages, et cetera, but I'm a complete n00b to windows aside from using it on school/office computers where I am just running a few apps and it's straightforward and all ser up. So far Windows Vista Home Premium edition is driving me bonkers. I'm slowly picking up how to do things but it's still pretty nutty. Obviously I know how to run programmes and open files, but it's actual system maintenence type tasks that are weirding me out. Like when I install a programme, where do the different components traditionally get put? How do I set the screensaver to go off when I push the mouse into the corner instead of just when it's been sitting a while? Those aren't the questions I am asking now, as I am sure I will come to figure them out in time. I've already worked out the difference between an account with administrator permissions and an actual administrator account (the second being more like root). I actually bought this machine (an hp pavilion tx1115nr) to run openSuSE and reluctantly switched back to Vista when I couldn't get a lot of the hardware rnning under openSuSE.

So here is the deal. I have a laser printer, a Samsung ml-2010. When I had it on my powerbook I can't remember if I even had to install anything.

So I got out the CD and ran the software and plugged in the printer. When I plugged it in I think that I got something asking me if I wanted to automatically install the drivers. I was running a driver installation programme but I clicked OK anyway. I finished running the software on the CD (two sets of drivers? or maybe the computer set up the drivers and the CD had some software to access extra features like double-sided printing). After I was done I could't get the printer to work. I checked out samsung's website and saw that they had seperate Vista drivers with installation instructions not to click yes when the little box comes up asking me to automatically install the drivers. I had already done that but I tried installing the vista download anyway. Still no success printing.

So I am thinking that now I have to undo whatever I did when I told the computer to automatically install drivers? I was trying to figure out where those were and how to remove them, but when I go to Control Panel> Hardware & Sound> Remove a Printer the only printer I see listed is the Microsoft XPS document writer (which I think is similar to printing to a pdf file on a mac).

What do I do?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/ms_windows/82885.html