Last Updated on May 10, 2022 by Carlo Dach
It is common that you may find issues while printing using your printer. On occasions where the printer does not print at all, it might be due to the unavailability of the printer driver. This is an issue that needs to be fixed immediately if you want to keep printing using your printer. Below is a discussion on how to solve the unavailability of printer drivers for Windows OS and to stop printer driver conflicts.
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What Causes Printer Driver Unavailable
When you come to know that there is no driver for your printer, it is caused mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, you may have a wrong printer driver installed on your system. The second reason is that it might be an old version. Below are a few ways to fix this issue.
Reinstall the Printer Driver
The first solution to fix this issue is to reinstall the driver. In case you are using a Windows 10 PC or laptop, you may press the Windows logo along with R to enter the Run Box. After this, you may enter devmgmt.msc to the box before clicking OK. After selecting print queues, you should find the printer driver. Now, right click it and pick the ‘Uninstall device’. After this, confirm the process.
Printer Driver Unavailable
Once you uninstall printer driver, you may reinstall the right driver. Ensure that you install the correct driver or ensure that it is the updated version. Failure to do this will mean that the issue will happen again. Further, if you uninstall the existing installed driver, you will have to install them from the start. In these cases, you will have to find the most updated driver from the internet. When looking to download the driver, make sure you visit a trusted website. It is recommended to go with the official website of the manufacturer of the printer. If your driver is unavailable HP printer, you may look for their official website to find drivers. There are several other non-official websites. Make sure you trust the process before making any mistakes like picking up malware.
Ways to Prevent Printer Driver Conflicts
Print management would have been a difficult task if there were no printer drivers. Hence, it is important to ensure their smooth functioning to avoid any issues in the future. You can take some precautions to ensure the same. Below are six things you can do in order to prevent any printer driver conflicts. These may not address every cause of the problem, but they certainly remove the most common causes of trouble.
- Use Universal Drivers: this is the easiest way to prevent driver conflict. You can remove the model specific printer drivers from your system. This may take out the printer-specific functionality. However, it will give you the simplicity and efficiency of management.
- Prune The Driver Repository On a Regular Basis: as the size of the print environment grows bigger, the more possibility it has to build up a big collection of drivers. Note that you may not even be using some of these. It is recommended to prune this repository for outdated drivers. This allows you to find the erroneous driver quicker and also reduces the troubleshooting time consumed for printer driver conflicts.
- 3. Practice Printer Driver Isolation: the latest printer servers have the capacity to isolate printer drivers when you want to. This means that every driver runs through a self-contained process instead of the one that runs the print spooler which is helpful in avoiding driver spooler crashes. Even though this will not put an end to the spooler crashes it will definitely reduce the major issue.
- Disallow Access To Printer Drivers: allowing the user to select and install the printer driver could be highly risky if they do not own the right set of tools. End users may select the wrong driver if they do not have the appropriate naming conventions and safeguards. These issues can be solved if access to drivers is limited.
- Separate Drivers Using Print Servers: in order to separate the drivers, it may be necessary to create separate print servers. This will help in sorting the issues of 32- and 64-bit versions. With the help of smaller pools of drivers, the number of variables that create more obstacles while troubleshooting conflicts, would be reduced. Note that the presence of additional print servers will raise the complexity and bulk of print infrastructure.
- Think Before Upgrading: remember that a little bit of care while upgrading could save you from a lot of trouble with printer and driver in the future. Read the online reviews, assess the online forums, and speak to admins of other organizations to check if there are any unexpected consequences before using a driver upgrade.
You may face several hp printer problems during its lifetime, out of which a significant number would be printer driver conflicts. You can follow the above measures to stay away from a majority of common problems.
