Printer drivers

[MD5]

Evening all!

I have a few Fuji ASK 2500 dye sublimation printers, which are connected to Windows XP laptops and are shared on an intranet. They are USB port specific, so once installed will only work from the port they were installed in. I've had to replace a couple recently, and have installed them in spare USB ports.

My question is this: Could I have installed them in their predecessors' ports, or would this have overwritten the previous installations? Thanks.

 

[clk320x]

If they are indentical models I don’t see why you couldn’t just plug them into a port previously used and the computer wouldn’t know any different? No need to faff about with settings etc?

 

[MD5]

Sorry, what I should have said is that the 2500 models have replaced ASK 2000 printers (previous model), which may be reintroduced when repaired.

 

[markjay]

I don't know the answer, but on a general note, many new models of printers will work also with drivers made for older models from the same range, though perhaps lacking some features. So it's worth trying.

 

[MD5]

The drivers aren't the issue so much as being shared on an intranet which creates names automatically with each new installation. For this reason I'd like to keep the original installations in tact.

 

[John]

You should be able to install the new printers on the same USB ports you've used before and it will not overwrite the previous printer settings.

Each printer which is installed creates an entry in the registry and a visual icon for that printer along with the settings, driver etc. which it uses (unless you install and run identical printers respectively from the same port - in which case Windows will see it as the same device).

If you install multiple printers, you will have multiple registry entries, potentially multiple-installed drivers and icons for the printers which are installed and any which are not connected will typically be "greyed" out.

 

[AltonAnt]

The way a PC recognises a peice of hardware including USB devices is by a Vendor and Product ID (vid/pid) which are unique to each device type.
You new printers will be seen as completely different devices although the previous driver may still work as the driver has a .inf file which matches these vid/pid pairs to the correct files and often contains these for multiple devices in a vendors range.

 

[MD5]

Thank you both, that's helpful.