Hi Murray--
I'm not sure about the external HD so I'll leave that to others. I know
you've repeatedly tried to do the obvious t-shooting steps.
Try this:
Unplug the USB cord and power cord from the printer to your PC. (I assume
this isn't blue toothed).
Then plug in both cords. Reboot Vista and see if the printer is recognized.
You should get some sign of this in the notification area (system tray/over
by the clock). Once the new hardware is recognized, either click that small
icon and see if you get a wizard to install the printer.
Some printer manufacturers insist that you must use the "Add New Printer
Wizard." Mine does, although when I had a problem with it that wizard
onceand couldn't use it, I was able to get the printer installed using the
Add New Hardware wizard. If Canon is one of those try using the Add New
Printer wizard by going to the Printers folder and in Vista there is an "Add
a Printer" link to click on the toolbar.
The bottom line here is that I want you to get the Printer recognized, and
then install the driver via the Add Printer wizard.
See if Cannon has any updated driver for your printer on their site, since
updated drivers usually have minor and sometimes major improvements.
As to Device Manager:
I do get this help from Device Manager, when it ****shows an entry, and for
pritner you often have to go to View>Show hidden devices. Device Manager is
unfortunately not reliable when it says "the driver is working properly"
because that happens not infrequently when a driver is trashed. I have
written confirmation from the Vista teams working with Device Manager that
no one at Redmond felt compelled to fix this in Vista, but there is always
Blackcomb or whatever they name the new OS in 3-4 years. After all,
Device Manager has only been released since August 24, 1995 and today is
August 17, 2007 so it's only been approximately 12 years that device manager
has been out and they could have made it reliable for indicating if a driver
is healthy. They are busy. It's only been 12 years. About 97% of the
people who use computers use Windows as at least one of their operating
systems, and apparently they are apathetic about device manager being an
index of driver health. I know Microsoft at Redmond is.
Good luck,
CH
"murray oz" <> wrote in message
news:2027FF27-BA76-473F-9AB0-...
> canon printer has been working fine now won't. can't find drivers. have
> installed, reinstalled still not working. have tried too many things to
> list.
> tells me that the active directory domain is currently unavailble. i do
> not
> know what this is as printer is connected via usb and is not networked.
> have
> tried to back up externally to a usb WD hard drive but cannot find that
> driver either. i have no idea how to fix.
>
> any help would be greatly appreciated.
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