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#46768 by joshhuggins
Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:36 am
To install a printer driver with no physical printer in Windows 7, but it should be very similar to Vista. Make sure you have a simple driver package, meaning it is just a bunch of files which includes a file with a .inf extension. Not a .exe installer application.
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- Click the Start Orb (The Blue Window Ball Thingy),
- If Devices And Printers (or Printers on Vista) is listed directly on the Start menu click that, if not, click Control Panel, and select Devices And Printers (or Printers on Vista) from there.
- Click Add a Printer
- Select Add Local Printer
- When prompted to pick a port select Create A New Port, and set the drop down to Local Port. Name it something simple like the name of the printer ex. 'DesignJet 5500' or 'Printshop', click O.K.
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- On the Install Printer Driver dialog, select Have Disk, and browse to the location where you have the driver files stored. Select the corresponding .inf file and click O.K. Pick the desired printer from the list if there is more than one option, and click Next.
- Give the printer a unique name if you wish and click Next
- You will be prompted with the option to share the printer, but that is kind of pointless for a non-existent printer, just install the driver as mentioned here if you need it on another system. Click Next
- Check/Uncheck the Set As Default option, no need to run a test page at this point, click Finish.

You can now right click on the printer in the Devices & Printers (Printers in Vista) and adjust the drivers settings as needed just as if it was physically installed. When printing in Datacad, you will of course need to set it to print to PDF's.

One nice thing you can do is create different printer drivers with different settings. Say your printer driver only gives your 3 custom paper sizes, but you need 6? You can install 2 separate printer drives on a unique ports & printer names. You could call the first 'Plotter Small' and setup your 3 smallest paper sizes on that one and then for the second printer call it 'Plotter Large' and setup the last 3 larger paper sizes on it. Basically anything that you want to setup in the drivers uniquely you could.

Some other printer related tips:
:idea: The more printers you have setup, the more time it will likely take to bring up the printer dialog. Having 4-6 printers won't make a big difference, but getting over 8 printing device you may start to see some delay going into the printer setup menus and settings, especially if they are networked devices.

:idea: If you had a ton of different printers installed over the life time of your computer, or have a laptop that has automatically connected to other shared printers when visiting other offices, the drivers for each different device model are loaded into your systems internal print server. To help clean out old drivers, and speed up your internal print server you can do the following:
:arrow: Open Devices And Printers, highlight any printer, and you will get a new option at the top of the window called, Print Server Properties, click it.

:!: Warning there are no undo or backup options past this point. It's pretty straight forward stuff and you can easily reinstall drivers if needed, but you may loose any configurations you had previously setup in your printer drivers. Consult your system admins if needed, we'd appreciate it ;)

:arrow: Starting on the Drivers tab, you will see the names of all the printers which have ever been installed on your system. If you see a driver that is no longer being used, you can highlight it and click Remove. It will ask you if you want to remove the driver or the driver and the driver package. Typically you will only want to remove the driver and keep the driver package, in case you ever need to print to that model printer again. If you suspect your printers driver may have become corrupt, then you may want to remove the driver and package so you can install a completely new driver package from the manufactures web site.

:arrow: On the ports tab, this list all of the ports ever used to print on your computer. Depending on how familiar you are with what ports are currently in use and which are not you can remove unused ports here.

:arrow: On the forms tab you can add custom paper sizes (forms) that most newer drivers will support. I don't believe all older drivers support this feature. You can remove some of the existing sizes that were added with printer drivers from here. You can remove system set forms from the following registry location: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Forms I usually go thru and delete the sizes we don't use like the Japanese sizes.

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