My wife retired her Canon Pixma Pro 10.
I remember back in the old days, Windows would automatically detect new USB h/w and ask if you want to look for drivers on line or provide a driver CD. Absolutely nothing happened when I plugged it in. (Tried three different Win 11 machines with same result.) Though I could install it by using the CD, it was a bit glitchy. I had to unplug and replug once as it lost connectivity.
After the install , no problems.

Just out of curiosity, I plugged the printer into an ancient Mac I have in my workshop and it detected the printer and went on line for drivers and installed in very short time.

This is not a big deal. Just a matter of curiosity.

On 12/27/2023 5:50 PM, philo wrote:
> My wife retired her Canon Pixma Pro 10.
> I remember back in the old days, Windows would automatically detect new USB h/w and ask if you want to look for drivers on line or provide a driver CD.  Absolutely nothing happened when I plugged it in. (Tried three different Win 11 machines with same result.) Though I could install it by using the CD, it was a bit glitchy. I had to unplug and replug once as it lost connectivity.
> After the install , no problems.
> Just out of curiosity, I plugged the printer into an ancient Mac I have in my workshop and it detected the printer and went on line for drivers and installed in very short time.
> This is not a big deal. Just a matter of curiosity.

Even the article seems a bit confused.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/add-a-printer-or-scanner-in-windows-14d9a442-0bcb-e11c-7a6c-63f00efae79f#ID0EBD=Windows_11

Device Manager has automatic population capability, but
it can get "stuck".

There is a balance to be struck, between "turning off Windows Update
so it does not add bogus drivers or add drivers which do not belong
on the machine". And leaving it on, so it fulfills customer expectations.

A recent incident for example, was adding HP printer software when
you did not have an HP printer. A Cumulative Update, may have corrected that.

The old scheme (which you note), of having the ability to tell
the item to update its driver from a provided source (some folder
you put it in), I suspect that may still work. But if you ask it
to find a driver, it may refuse to take direction from humans,
and it will slag you off onto a Windows Update interface, and
leave you with "nothing". No clue as to what the next step might be.

Microsoft has had, for some time, "Universal printer drivers".
One may have been done for laser printers that accept PostScript prints.
Later, other versions were made, for other hardware types. These
were a "framework". Hewlett Packard could use the framework, install
a .ppd in the package for a printer, and perhaps then a printer
would "just work" without a lot of custom DLLs and such.

Microsoft has a "big plan", to eliminate manufacturer "fancy CD" drivers
altogether. It will "rule the kingdom" with spartan drivers.

Let's take an example. My cheesy inkjet fancied itself a "photo printer".
All this meant, was you could buy a fancy coated paper at the store
and insert it into the printer tray. The printer hardware itself,
was just a vanilla CMYK, without benefit of several blacks.

Well, to support that premise, it could do "6-up" on "card stock".
Very nice for doing little wallet photos of yourself. The custom control
panel had a ton of paper stock weights, coatings and types, plus
settings for the various photo card sizes.

How might a generic whack-a-doo driver and control panel handle that ?
It wouldn't. Instead, the stinky driver would do a 8.5x11 portrait
print on plain stock. End of function. This would then convert all
"art printers" into <cough> "line printers". And ruin the printer
company premium printer lines. You wouldn't be able to check ink
levels, on your Brother tank printer for example.

So exactly what Microsoft thinks they're fucking with, I haven't a clue.
A universal whack-a-doo useless driver / Control Panel, is going
to make no one happy. And when it comes to Feature Design, Microsoft
could not extricate themselves from a wet paper bag, when it comes
to making a GUI for something. Imagine just how awful, squidging
an art print out onto card stock is going to be, when their awful
creation is ready :-/

It's like hearing you entered a lions cage, and you got out alive :-)
Good on you :-) Your accounting though, does not make me want to go
out and buy a printer right now.

Even Safely Remove has had the nuts removed from it. It will not
offer Safely Remove for FAT32. It does not make a noise when you
pull the FAT32 out of the machine. <User> "Did I just fuck something?"
"Am I doing this right?". With no feedback, the user has received
no reward for correct behavior, no admonition for doing something
bad, and so on. This is just bad design. How will the user discover
which file systems need Safe Removal, if the "response for some of
my USB sticks was limp-wristed"? The user will have no clue,
if this is to be a Discover-able Exercise. The Safely Remove
should list all USB sticks, and indicate "safe to remove" so
the user has some idea it is safe to remove. You go to a great deal
of trouble to train the users, and then you leave them hanging ???

Summary: Expected behavior. Users are to be left in the dark.
Is your printer installed ? Maybe. Or maybe Windows Update
did not pull a driver like it was supposed to. Or maybe...
Paul pulls up long long Dead Sea Scroll fault analysis chart...
It's a good thing *you* know how to install a printer.
We're relying on *your* training, dear customer.

Paul

On Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:50:36 +0000, philo@news.novabbs.com (philo)
wrote:

>My wife retired her Canon Pixma Pro 10.
>I remember back in the old days, Windows would automatically detect new USB h/w and ask if you want to look for drivers on line or provide a driver CD. Absolutely nothing happened when I plugged it in. (Tried three different Win 11 machines with same result.) Though I could install it by using the CD, it was a bit glitchy. I had to unplug and replug once as it lost connectivity.
>After the install , no problems.
>
>Just out of curiosity, I plugged the printer into an ancient Mac I have in my workshop and it detected the printer and went on line for drivers and installed in very short time.
>
>This is not a big deal. Just a matter of curiosity.

Win11 has a printer setting something like "let win11 select the
default printer". that setting may be locked into the old printer.
That setting is in the printer settings area. Not too hard to find.

KenW

All three of the Win 11 machines were new builds.
Never had a previous printer. All three acted the same.
I tried a win7 machine and as expected, it immediately detected the printer.
Had to do the CD install of course but there was no connectivity glitch.

As for Win11, the other side of the coin is that I also got a new Brother laser printer which I put on the network.
All the Win11 machines just booted up and it was just automatically installed. No dialog was even needed.

I guess the Pro-10 is a pretty old machine.
My wide got a new one because the Pro10's head died. I did not want to toss it because of course I have a two year supply of ink. Canon could not supply a new head but there were thankfully plenty of good , used ones on eBay.

On Thu, 28 Dec 2023 01:41:40 +0000, philo@news.novabbs.com (philo) wrote:

>As for Win11, the other side of the coin is that I also got a new Brother laser printer which I put on the network.
>All the Win11 machines just booted up and it was just automatically installed. No dialog was even needed.

My recent Brother laser printer came with an info sheet that said I should go to
the Brother site and download/install the driver *before* I connect the printer,
so that's what I did. I never even saw the limited-functionality Microsoft
driver.

On Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:50:36 +0000, philo@news.novabbs.com (philo)
wrote:

>My wife retired her Canon Pixma Pro 10.
>I remember back in the old days, Windows would automatically detect new USB h/w and ask if you want to look for drivers on line or provide a driver CD. Absolutely nothing happened when I plugged it in. (Tried three different Win 11 machines with same result.) Though I could install it by using the CD, it was a bit glitchy. I had to unplug and replug once as it lost connectivity.
>After the install , no problems.
>
Modern versions of Windows have drivers for many devices built in and
it's rare for drivers to be supplied on DVDs.
A few days ago I would have said that it's been a few years since the
installation of a new device in my self-build PC has required any
action on the driver front from me but at the weekend I swapped an AMD
Radeon video card for an Nvidia device, which the AMD driver took
control of and limited its output to a single monitor, even after I
removed the driver in the Device Manager and re-scanned, so I
downloaded and installed the Nvidia driver and all was well but that's
an exception. I've even swapped motherboards and booted off the
HDD/SSD with the OS configured for the old one with no driver issues.

After playing with this a bit, it seems the problem is limited to just one of my win11 machines.
After I finally got it working, the spooler shut down.
It's not I machine I'm actually using for anything other than experimenting

For my text only printer, any generic driver is fine.

For my photo / negative scanner and photo printer...only the meg's drivers will do

On 12/27/2023 4:50 PM, philo wrote:
> My wife retired her Canon Pixma Pro 10.
> I remember back in the old days, Windows would automatically detect new
> USB h/w and ask if you want to look for drivers on line or provide a
> driver CD.  Absolutely nothing happened when I plugged it in. (Tried
> three different Win 11 machines with same result.) Though I could
> install it by using the CD, it was a bit glitchy. I had to unplug and
> replug once as it lost connectivity.
> After the install , no problems.
> Just out of curiosity, I plugged the printer into an ancient Mac I have
> in my workshop and it detected the printer and went on line for drivers
> and installed in very short time.
> This is not a big deal. Just a matter of curiosity.

I went to Canon's website and found a newer driver plus a firmware
update. (plus a security update) Applied them all.

I have now decided to use the printer in my office where I have a win10
machine. Printer installed without a glitch.

Now I'm done fooling with it.

Peter Johnson wrote:

> Modern versions of Windows have drivers for many devices built in and
> it's rare for drivers to be supplied on DVDs.

When adding a printer through
Settings/Bluetooth&Devices/Printers&Scanners

When you reach the option touse a driver, there's an option to use
WindowsUpdate, I find this takes a long time (up to 20 minutes
regardless of internet bandwidth) but get you a *looong* list of extra
printer manufacturers and models

The list still isn't exhaustive, e.g. I have a customer who has some
very old DesignJets that HP and MS no longer support, but if you tickle
the vista driver nicely, it will install on Win10/Win11

I've done that old driver download and it worked fine for my old text-only Samsung printer after the built-in generic driver didn't work.

Just for fun, I tried a generic driver on a Mac made years before my printer was made and it worked.