The recent posts about manually removing a printer prove how infectious curiosity can be. Since this is the type of work few people perform with any regularity, I wouldn’t be surprised if a bit of trial and error mixed with conjecture gets applied to the problem.
I examined how Windows welcomed my printer, an ancient Epson 9 pin, LX-800.
First, I went through the motions of installing it. Windows provided a wizard to automate the process. This was my first clue that printer installation isn’t simple. I then checked the registry.
Searching the registry for “Epson”, returned a number of keys. The following key proved the most interesting. Most sub-keys seem straight forward except for “Dependent Files” and it’s odd list of hex values.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows 4.0\Drivers\Epson LX-800]
"Configuration File"="EPSON9.DRV"
"Data File"="EPSON9.DRV"
"Driver"="EPSON9.DRV"
"Version"=dword:00000400
"Monitor"=""
"Datatype"="EMF"
"Help File"="UNIDRV.HLP"
"Dependent Files"=hex:6d,73,70,72,69,6e,74,33,2e,63,61,74,00,45,50,53,4f,4e,39, 2e,44,52,56,00,55,4e,49,44,52,56,2e,44,4c,4c,00,55,4e,49,44,52,56,2e,48,4c, 50,00,44,4d,43,4f,4c,4f,52,2e,44,4c,4c,00,49,43,4f,4e,4c,49,42,2e,44,4c,4c, 00,00
Converting the chain of hex values to their ASCII equivalents gives the following text string:
msprint3.cat EPSoN9.DRV UNIDRV.DLL UNIDRV.HLP DMCoLoR.DLL ICoNLIB.DLL
It’s tempting to comment on Windows mixture of capital and lower case letters.
Interestingly, all these files can be found on my system. I assume, and I must emphasise that this is my assumption, that only the Epson9.DRV deals specifically with my chosen printer. The others appear to be universal .DLL or Icon files. (Look into the icon library and you’ll see dozens of ‘paper’ and ‘envelope’ images.)
Since there appears to be a mixture of specific and universal files, an automated un-installer will (wisely) not remove them all. This (wise) action will trigger the “We didn’t get rid of all the files” warning message.
The tiny bit of disk space occupied by a few unused printer drivers extracts a small penalty compared to the punishment meted out when a critical file gets removed accidentally. Do yourself a favour and accept the automated un-installation’s judgement.
Feel free to install the new printer. The install wizard will put the necessary files in the required locations.
Cheers, PW. |
