Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Managing Printer Drivers

If client computers need additional printer drivers, you can use Print Management to add them to print servers, and you can also remove print drivers from print servers when clients no longer need them. For example, you can add additional printer drivers for network printers to support 64-bit Windows client computers by following these steps:

1. Open Print Management and expand the console tree to select the Drivers node beneath the print server to which you want to add additional drivers.
2. Right-click the Drivers node, select Add Driver to open the Add Printer Driver Wizard, and then click Next.
3. Select the types of system architectures for which you need to install additional drivers.
4. Click Next. If the drivers you need to install are not already staged within the driver store on the local computer, you will need to do one of the following:
   • Click Have Disk and provide driver media or specify a network location where the driver packages are available.
   • Click Windows Update if this is available to display a list of printer drivers available on Windows Update. Note that it can take several minutes for the list of printer drivers to be downloaded from Windows Update the first time that this is done.

Continue stepping through the wizard to add the drivers to the print server and make them available for clients that need them.

The following considerations apply when adding additional drivers using Print Management:

• Using the Add Printer Drivers Wizard from Print Management running on Windows Server 2003 R2 or later lets you add additional x86, x64, and Itanium drivers for versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista.
• Using the Add Printer Drivers Wizard from Print Management running on Windows Vista or later lets you add Type 3 (User Mode) printer drivers only for x86, x64, and Itanium systems running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2. To add additional drivers for earlier versions of Windows, use Print Management on Windows Server 2003 R2 or later versions instead of Windows 7.

Note There are no differences in the installation method for adding 32-bit and 64-bit drivers.

You can also remove printer drivers from print servers when client computers no longer need these drivers. To remove a printer driver from a print server, follow these steps:

1. Open Print Management and expand the console tree to select the Drivers node beneath the print server from which you want to remove drivers.
2. Right-click a driver under the Drivers node and select Delete.
3. Click Yes to confirm your action.

Note When you use the preceding steps to remove a printer driver from the local print server (when using a Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer as a print server), the driver package is uninstalled but remains staged in the driver store. Windows will pick and install the driver again when a compatible TCP/IP or Plug and Play printer is added to the system. If you selected Remove Driver Package instead of Delete, however, Windows will remove the package and not use the driver again.

You can display detailed information for all printer drivers installed on a print server by following these steps:

1. Open Print Management and expand the console tree to select the Drivers node beneath a print server.
2. From the View menu, select Add/Remove Columns.
3. Add additional columns from the list of available columns to display more detail concerning each driver installed on the server.

To save detailed information concerning each driver installed on a print server and import it into Microsoft Office Excel for reporting purposes, follow the preceding procedure to add the columns desired and then right-click the Drivers node and select Export List. Save the detailed driver as a comma-separated (*.csv) file and import it into Office Excel. The Export List command is available for any node in an MMC snap-in.