Updated Printer Driver

Printer Drivers are essentially small software programs which allow your Printer to communicate with your computer.

Different Operating Systems will use different Printer Drivers and the Drivers are also specific to the brand, type and model of Printer. So a HP Photosmart 5510 running on Windows 7 will need a different Printer Driver to HP Photosmart b110 also running on Windows 7. This would in turn need a different Driver when running on Windows 8.

Basically Printer Drivers are very specific and the vast majority of the problems we hear about relate to incompatible, out-of-date, corrupt or missing Printer Drivers.

You essentially have 2 options if your Printer Drivers need to be updated. You can go to the manufacturers website and locate, download and install the Drivers yourself (the older Drivers may be difficult to locate in this manner), or you can use a Driver Update Tool to automate this process. It all depends on how much time you are willing to spend on it and also how confident you feel updating the Drivers yourself.

How can I fix Drivers problems?

1. You can try to track down an updated version of your Printer Drivers if you know the manufacturer and type of driver required.
2. use a driver update tool (this will apply to all your required Drivers and not just the Printer Drivers)

Common Printer Driver Problems

While Driver errors are very common and can be the reason for your Printer problems, they are not always the issue. Click here to view our article on general Printer problems. We also have additional articles on the more common printer errors such as Lexmark Printer Driver Errors. To view a list of the most common manufacturers go to our homepage at Drivers.com, you can then click on any of the links to get more details on that particular device or manufacturer.