USB Printer

I just hooked up a USB printer to my significant others system. Its working fine now, but the first time I installed it, it showed up as a USB device but not a printer. On the USB side everything was fine, but it wasn't listed as a printer, and the printer wizard won't take USB as a port under ME.

After fooling around with it for 15 minutes, I deleted the USB device, booted the system, let ME reinstall the USB device, and bingo, it showed up as a printer automatically.

How the heck does it do that, and can it be done manually? Just currious. HP and Microsoft help are worthless as far as I can tell on this topic.

Thanks!

The only reason I can come up with as to why that happened is because you were installing on Windows ME which really just isn't a quality OS. But that's just my opinion :)

I like ME. Never had a problem with it.

I'm interested in how a USB device becomes a printer.

Well, something might have happened that it couldn't recognize what the device was when you first installed it. I've had more than enough friends with problems like this in ME, just getting stuff to work. That's the main reason why I don't like it, compatibility issues.

As for your question, all devices send some sort of general signal to notify the computer as to what they are. This is why USB means Universal Serial Bus. A device hooked into this will tell the USB port what they are and the port will then tell the OS. The OS now knows what type of a device is in there and can now search for the compatible drivers to make it work.

The reason you can switch devices around after they've first been installed at least once is because they'll send the exact same signal every time they hook up to the USB. Since it's the same signal the computer will use the same device settings it used before, allowing for fast "swapping" of components.

That's about as dumbed down as I can really make it. More details will require a lot more typing.

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Originally posted by [AK?]llDayo
The only reason I can come up with as to why that happened is because you were installing on Windows ME which really just isn't a quality OS. But that's just my opinion :)

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LOL! I bought a few machines from Gateway for here at work awhile back that came with WinME. I ended up calling Gateway and I told the tech support person the computers came with a virus. The guy said: "What do you mean the PC came with a virus?" I told them they preinstalled WinME and Norton detected it <G>

I had to whipe all of them clean and install Win2K Pro. I went to hell and back trying to get WinME to work on our VPN and finally just surrendered. Just Friday I whiped (I believe) our last WinME machine clean after (I honestly don't know what caused it - could have been user error) the registry became FUBAR'd and you couldn't access 1/2 the programs installed.

I understand how USB itself works, and I'm not looking for a 'dumbed down' explanation of USB. I'm also not interested in how everyone hates ME. Thanks.

I'm interested in how a USB device registers itself as a printer with the OS, and if its possible to do this manually, since the Printer Wiz doesn't seem to look at the USB ports.