How to find the INF file in an installed printer driver

I had installed a printer driver on a Window 7 x64 machine using the selection Windows offer. I do not have the driver disk, nor can I download the driver one the web or the vendor website (I don't know why - the driver is EPSON LQ Series 1 (80)). I now need move the printer to a remote Window XP x86 machine, and need to install the INF file to that machine.

I cannot find the INF file. I looked into the driver folders for the printer but there are NO exe file either for me to extract, but just files of dlls, mui etc.

The driver is installed on the x64 machine. I do not have the disk, no EXE, cannot download from vendor site. I had used double driver, but it doesn't show the printer driver. How can I extract the INF locally?

KMC

Posted 2012-12-11T06:44:11.713

Reputation: 1 537

Answers

What your are wanting to do will not work. The current computer that has the driver is 64-bit, which means the driver will most likely not work on your 32-bit machine. (There is a slim chance, but read the following point.)

Secondly, Windows Vista changed the architecture of drivers that Windows uses, so Windows XP computers cannot use Windows Vista/7/8 drivers. The opposite is also true, Windows Vista/7/8 cannot use drivers developed for Windows XP. You can use drivers developed for Windows 98 with limited success on Windows XP though.

You going to have to search around and find the proper driver for your printer, or maybe a generic one. Your plan of ripping the driver from your current machine and installing it into windows XP is flawed, and will likely just waste time you could spend finding the proper driver.

Lee Harrison

Posted 2012-12-11T06:44:11.713

Reputation: 2 046

You could try DriverExtractor.

dangph

Posted 2012-12-11T06:44:11.713

Reputation: 3 478

This is an ancient post, but please consider expanding the answer. Just pointing to a product isn't considered an answer by current standards because it doesn't indicate anything about why it's a good solution or how to accomplish the solution. Good guidance on recommending software here. Thanks.

– fixer1234 – 2016-01-09T19:48:15.840

This is an old parallel port printer. I think it's possible to get it working, you just have to create the printer yourself.

The driver is there if you go to Start -> Devices and Printers -> Add Printer (at the top) -> Add Local Printer -> select the parallel port it's connected to -> then see below.

YMMV if you are trying this with a USB to parallel converter.

Just read your question more closely (sorry, it's early) and it seems you're trying to move this to an older Windows XP machine? Try doing the same on that XP machine. I forget how to get to the below dialog box on XP exactly but it's where you would find the built-in driver.

enter image description here

LawrenceC

Posted 2012-12-11T06:44:11.713

Reputation: 63 487