stoneunhinged

…can be a pain in the ass. I googled and found advice that didn’t work. I asked Gerhard, my best friend and IT expert, and experimented (as I said in a previous post) for several hours.

And based on all the advice, I finally got it to work.

Now for my advice to others with similar problems.

Trying to follow my philosophic training, I will reduce my advice to the simplest Occam’s Razor kind of advice. This advice might only work with Brother printers. Nevertheless, if it works, please let me know. If it doesn’t, Google some more.

Here’s my advice:

1. Unplug your printer.

2. Uninstall any previous printer installations. This can get complicated, as Vista doesn’t automatically list all installed devices in the device manager. You must click something that says something like “show hidden devices”, but I’m not sure what it says in English, since I’m using a German version of Vista. But you’ll find it. The point is that you must remove any previous printer installations.

3. Reboot your computer.

4. Assume (though this step might be completely unnecessary) that you had to reboot to finish re-installing your printer driver. So when the computer is again up and running: shut down your computer.

5. Wait until your hard drive stops humming and the static electricity goes away. Go to the bathroom. Go get a beer.

6. Do a cold boot. Now, maybe the terminology has changed. But years ago a “cold boot” meant doing what you just read in step #5.

7. Install Vista’s generic printer driver.

That’s my advice. The key here is: THE PRINTER SHOULD NOT BE PLUGGED IN WHEN INSTALLING THE DRIVER. Previously installed drivers screw it up. Brother’s own drivers screw it up. And using Plug and Play screws it up. In other words, with a virgin copy of Vista, install the generic printer driver BEFORE YOU EVER PLUG THE PRINTER IN!

That’s what worked for me. I’m curious whether it helps anyone else. Maybe not. Computers are fickle things.

jj