Comments on: 32bit Printer Drivers on an x64 Windows 2008 Print Server

By: Cortes

Cortes — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:10:39 +0000

We don’t want any universal drivers since they keep crashing our servers. The workaround for this is long, tedious and should be completely unnecessary.

Installing the printer with either native or PCL6 drivers on the server, then rewriting the .inf file on the 32bit driver to match and “jackhammering” it in (the digital signing disappears when you edit the .inf). Rinse & repeat for each printer. Should be fun with 70+ printers on this server…

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 01 May 2010 22:50:03 +0000

This is an issue for me as well. I have windows 2008 64bit, an d 100% all XP clients. Most of our printers are Dell, and not HP. That seems to have made the problem worse as HP has made this problem go away by naming thier drivers correctly. I have been spending hours on forums, and many speak of going to a Vista client and sharring… great, but I dont have Vista clients they are XP. I have been scouiring the Dell forums and nothing yet. this is very frustrating and I wonder who is to blame…MS? Dell?
I really dont want reg hacks, or silly workarounds, but a solid fix.
Thinking about just raising Alpacas for a living.
Arrrggg!

By: Barclay

Barclay — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:23:31 +0000

Thanks, easier than the way I had found.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:50:25 +0000

Why are Microsoft tools so lame that they require this cockamamie solution?

By: 2K8R2 - Printserver - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum

2K8R2 - Printserver - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:55:19 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Paul W.

Paul W. — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:59:25 +0000

OMG this is driving me nucking futs!!!!!!!! Why can’t manufacturers name the drivers with the same name??? Or why can’t Microsoft change this wonderful ‘feature’?

When ever I try to rename the driver name in the INF file and then try to install it on the Print Server it blows up and doesn’t complete the install.

By: Mel

Mel — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:52:05 +0000

I ran into this issue to, was a real hassle. Clearly some-one at Microsoft was not thinking about some of the routiene things that Admins need in order to support a LAN.

The real killer is that the 32-bit and 64-bit driver names have to match EXACTLY. Not surprising that many manufacturers are not 100% consistant about the names they give for 32-bit and 64-bit drivers for thier devices.

For instance you may run into an issue where the 64-bit driver is called “Dell 3100cn PCL6″ and the 32-bit version is named “Dell Color Laser 3100cn PCL6″, clearly drivers for the exact same device, and Server 2008 will still balk at associating it with the printer.

I was actualy able to make this work by going in and physicaly editing the .inf files for the drivers with notepad and making the text for the names of the drivers match EXACTLY. Surprisingly, that actualy worked.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:55:28 +0000

Great method, i’ve been looking for a way of getting this working with 2008 64-bit and XP clients.

many thanks!

By: printerguy

printerguy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:47:30 +0000

i already tried that and got “operation not supported”.
i ended up finding an article about using vista sp1 and the command printbrui.exe to export and import the printer drivers. seems to have work. cheers

By: Daniel Anderson

Daniel Anderson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:12:23 +0000

printerguy
From the Client machine go to your printer and faxes share on your Print Server, then File > Server Properties > Drivers Tab then browse for your 32bit Driver files