Found new hardware, but can't install printer using wizard

[Guest]

Every time we reboot this machine, or turn off this USB printer and turn it
back on, the Found New Hardware wizard pops up, but installing the printer
driver using the new hardware wizard fails -- yet installing it manually
works.

The machine is running XP SP2. It's a basis peer-to-peer LAN. We're using
this machine as a Remote for UPS Worldship software. It has a thermal label
printer attached that UPS provides. It's connected via USB. The driver is in
a folder on the local hard drive that UPS provides as part of its software.
It was installed and working fine for months... until two days ago, when
doing a manual Windows Update resulted in IE7 and some security updates being
installed (there had also been a momentary power outage earlier that caused
the computers to reboot but that seems hardly likely to be causing this
problem).

I've had senior level UPS tech support go through it with me over and over,
and we can't get it to work right. We can remove and re-install the driver no
problem if we do it manually by going in through "Settings - Printers - Add
New Printer", and the UPS software can print to this thermal printer fine
once we do. But that doesn't stop the Found New Hardware Wizard from popping
up on every reboot, or if the printer is turned off and turned back on.

When we delete the printer and try to let the New Hardware Wizard install
it, we keep getting an error saying the printer installation has encountered
a problem and it fails -- it says the printer driver is not known. (This is
not the same as just bypassing the warning that the driver wasn't approved by
MS and asking if you wan to Continue Anyway -- we say to continue and then we
get this error message.)

UPS TS says the only way to stop this is either to manage to install it
successfully through the Found New Hardware Wizard, which they're completely
at a loss how to do by now, or to tell Plug-and-Play not to let Windows look
for new hardware, which seems like an awfully radical move for solving a
relatively simple annoyance.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

you got urself quite a problem.
i recommend that you try and use Windows drivers for that device, or even if
that doesn' work, try and configure all the settings and drivers for this
device, since i'm not where you are i can't do any tinkering with the drivers
so i'm sorry i can't help that much

Cheers
JimmiBo

 

[Guest]

So the way I understand it, your previously installed printer is stil getting
detected by the Found New Hardware Wizard after every restart?

Then you can check this MS Article >>
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298370/en-us

I've also had a friend who encountered this problem before, MS Article did
not help us but here's what we did:

We disabled USB Printing Support in Device Manager then installed the
printer manually using Add HW wizard, after successful installation of
printer driver, we enabled USB Printing Support, rebooted PC, new HW wizard
didnt show up and the printer is working fine.

Hope this helps. Good luck and happy troubleshooting!

 

[Guest]

JimmiBoi,

I appreciate the effort to be of help. There are no windows drivers that
will work for the device, and I don't understand what else you mean. The only
way the New Hardware Wizard will stop popping up is if the device is
installed by using it.

Footnote: Some people have been posting on this newsgroup who are not all
that tech savvy. It is appreciated but doesn't help much and tends to hinder
answers from more experienced people because it looks to them at first glance
like the question has been answered, when it really hasn't.