You’ve waited a long time for this day. You’ve purchased it and upgraded, but now your printer won’t work. This is the plight of many Windows Vista users.

Windows released its much anticipated Vista operating system a few weeks ago.

Here’s what’s happening . . . When you upgrade to a new operating system the printer drivers that used to run your old computer hardware remain the same (they are not upgraded). The new operating system then tries to use them, but they are not compatible with the new system, are not recognized, and therefore cannot be used. If you are using drivers written for an older operating system you will need to upgrade to the latest driver, making sure that it was written for the new operating system you are running. In some cases there is no such thing. In other cases there is, but you can’t always guarantee your printer will work as well as it did with the old drivers and the old operating system.

The best place to find a new driver (if it is available) is on your printer manufacturer’s web site. You can then download the drive and install it on your computer.

Windows Vista has caught a lot of heat because of people’s printers not working after installing. In addition, there have been many rumors that many printer manufacturers are not going to update printer drivers to be compatible with Vista if the printer model is more than a few years old. What does this mean? Well, it means that if you have a printer without and updated driver you have two choices:

1) Revert back to the old operating system and drivers

2) Buy a new printer that has drivers that work with Windows Vista

The driver issues do not only apply to printers, they also apply to other hardware peripherals.

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