Printer Driver - keeps installing copies of driver

I have a laptop so don't always have the printer connected to it. Whenever
I do connect the printer, Vista goes off and searches for a driver (depsite
it already having one). It downloads and installs a copy of the printer
driver. When I try and print from Word or whatever, it sends to the latest
copy of the printer, which isn't of course the default! So nothing prints
and I get an error in the print queue. The only way I've found to sort the
problem is each time to go into control panel, delete the old printer and set
up the newest one as the default.

Apart from anything else it's driving my missus crazy because she cannot get
her head around what's going on!

Is there a way of stopping this from happening? Does it matter which USB
port I connect the printer to?

Details:
PC Toshiba Equium A100-337 laptop running Vista
Printer Samsung ML-1210

Many thanks,

This is typically caused when the device vendor does not supply a serial
number in the data stream from the device so the OS never knows it not the
same device.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"David Croxson" <DavidCroxson@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8A89C6E-E419-473D-A43D-5E1E974FF4F3@microsoft.com...
>
> I have a laptop so don't always have the printer connected to it.
> Whenever
> I do connect the printer, Vista goes off and searches for a driver
> (depsite
> it already having one). It downloads and installs a copy of the printer
> driver. When I try and print from Word or whatever, it sends to the
> latest
> copy of the printer, which isn't of course the default! So nothing prints
> and I get an error in the print queue. The only way I've found to sort
> the
> problem is each time to go into control panel, delete the old printer and
> set
> up the newest one as the default.
>
> Apart from anything else it's driving my missus crazy because she cannot
> get
> her head around what's going on!
>
> Is there a way of stopping this from happening? Does it matter which USB
> port I connect the printer to?
>
> Details:
> PC Toshiba Equium A100-337 laptop running Vista
> Printer Samsung ML-1210
>
> Many thanks,

Right - thank you... so is there anything I can do to stop this from
happening?!

"Alan Morris [MSFT]" wrote:

> This is typically caused when the device vendor does not supply a serial
> number in the data stream from the device so the OS never knows it not the
> same device.
>
> --
> Alan Morris
> Windows Printing Team
> Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
> http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1
>
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
>
> "David Croxson" <DavidCroxson@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C8A89C6E-E419-473D-A43D-5E1E974FF4F3@microsoft.com...
> >
> > I have a laptop so don't always have the printer connected to it.
> > Whenever
> > I do connect the printer, Vista goes off and searches for a driver
> > (depsite
> > it already having one). It downloads and installs a copy of the printer
> > driver. When I try and print from Word or whatever, it sends to the
> > latest
> > copy of the printer, which isn't of course the default! So nothing prints
> > and I get an error in the print queue. The only way I've found to sort
> > the
> > problem is each time to go into control panel, delete the old printer and
> > set
> > up the newest one as the default.
> >
> > Apart from anything else it's driving my missus crazy because she cannot
> > get
> > her head around what's going on!
> >
> > Is there a way of stopping this from happening? Does it matter which USB
> > port I connect the printer to?
> >
> > Details:
> > PC Toshiba Equium A100-337 laptop running Vista
> > Printer Samsung ML-1210
> >
> > Many thanks,
>
>
>

[TheMisio]

Alan,

Can you please expand on your answer a bit? We are having severe problems on our Windows 2003 (servers) and Windows XP network.
Every time users log on, printer drivers are being installed, even though the drivers already exist on their workstations. Even then, the drivers install again whenever users try to print. It is really problematic as we have thousands of users and it affects network performance.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards,

Michael
Active Directory Technical Spe******t