Printer Drivers

If you need some help choosing which print driver to use we can help. So, you’ve got a printer and head to their support page to get a driver for your printer model. There you’re met with an alphabet soup of PCL, PS, PCLm, UFRII, MP, KMX, KPDL, and Universal.

So you’re considering getting a printer and want to know if you have to pay for printer drivers. The answer is no, you do not have to pay for print drivers. They are free from the manufacturer.
Buying a printer and not being able to use it is silly. Manufacturers wouldn’t sell many printers if they didn’t include a way to use it.

Whether a printer is made by HP, Canon, Epson, Brother, Lexmark, or other brands, it requires data and commands to print anything. The purpose of a printer driver is to establish a connection, then send data and commands to a printer.
Printer drivers function as a bridge between your printer and the image you want to print. It communicates with your printer in a language it understands.

A print driver enables you to send print jobs to your printer. Manufacturers make printer drivers for every make and model of printers. They also make universal printer drivers.

Device drivers are necessary for hardware to function with a computer. Printer drivers are simply device drivers for printers. A printer driver is the simplest way for a printer to interact with a computer.
A printer driver processes data from the OS for the printer to use and interprets data from the printer for the OS to use.

While I’m installing printer drivers I frequently get asked if there’s a limit to how many printer drivers can be installed on a PC. There is no hard limit to how many printers you can have on one PC. Though each installation uses resources on your PC.

ln case you aren’t able to get printer drivers, here’s an easy way to transfer them between computers.
Like anything in Windows there are several ways to transfer printer drivers:

Printer drivers are stored in different locations in different operating systems. Locating printer drivers is essential to transferring them, reinstalling them, or removing them.

When I come across a printer driver that cannot be deleted here’s what I do. I stop the print spooler service. Then I remove the printer and it’s associated printer driver.
I also use a printer driver removal tool to completely remove the print driver. This tool will find registry entries and orphaned files to delete.

I often need to find out what printer driver is installed for my job. Either I need to know what type of printer driver is installed or its version.
Like anything in Windows I’ve found there are several ways to accomplish this task. You can use these three methods to tell what printer driver is installed in Windows 10:

I’ve installed thousands of printer drivers both for work and at home. In my experience installing printer drivers takes between 5 and 15 minutes on average. I’ve had a few exceptions, some only took a minute while others took nearly an hour.
Although, the longer time was expected since it was a Fiery PS driver with many, many extras. If installing your home printer is taking more than 20 minutes

If you just want to install the basic printer, without any additional software then follow the instructions below.
Many manufacturers such as HP, Canon, Brother, etc bundle additional software with their printer driver package.

When your printer driver is unavailable, it means Windows can’t use the printer driver. Windows can still detect a printer but there’s a problem with the printer driver itself.
A driver enables Windows to make use of hardware. Printers may seem advanced but they’re just another piece of hardware to an operating system.