Printer stopped working on network and local W7 64 pc

Question

For the last few years my home server has been an old WinXP box, to which I have had a Canon Pixma IP6700D printer connected, it has worked perfectly printing over the network from the various W7 laptops and desktops in the house.

As part of the set up of a home business I bought a microserver and installed Windows Home Server on it to replace the old XP box.

The printer will print locally from the server and will still print from one of my laptops over the network, but it will not print locally or via the network from my desktop pc (W7 64).

When I attempt to set up a network printer on the desktop box and select 'Network Printer' it identifies the printer on the network and then I choose it and click 'ok' it says it's checking Windows Update and takes forever, but eventually it comes up with the message 'No driver found' and gives me the option to click ok to locate one manually.

The problem is that according to the Canon website there are no drivers for this printer for W7 64, it should just work natively. If, however I click 'cancel', it says 'Cannot connect to printer'.

I can't begin to fathom why the laptop works and the desktop doesn't.

Does this problem ring any bells with anyone? Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Many thanks!

Answer 1

You are correct that you need a 64-bit driver for Win7 64-bit. The other computers that can print successfully are 32-Bit versions of Windows.

I checked Canon's web site for that model, and there is an error on their site. If you select Windows 7 64-Bit as the operating system, no driver shows. If you choose Windows Vista 64-Bit, however, that driver does show, and it should work fine with Windows 7.