Problems sharing printers in Windows 10, RESOLVED!

[turbguy]

I updated my laptop to Win 10 two weeks ago, and was able to still print ("printer sharing") to my wife's Win 7 USB-connected MP730 over the home network.

Then I upgraded my wife's computer to Win 10 several days after mine.

Upon looking at printers in the devices and printer settings menu on her computer, Win 10 noted that there was "no driver available", but it still worked from her USB-connected computer! I guess it downloaded and used an old Canon driver...

BUT, upon attempting to print over the network from MY laptop, I got an "Unable to print. Access is denied" message. The MP730 print driver window opened/displayed on my laptop, but it just sat at "collecting printer status".

Upon troubleshooting, I opened the printer properties on her machine, and opened the "sharing" tab. Guess what. "Share This Printer" was unchecked! I guess the newly downloaded "old" driver gets set to a default.

Upon checking the "Share This Printer" checkbox, and waiting several minutes for the network to sort things out, I COULD PRINT TO HER PRINTER FROM MY LAPTOP!!

 

[PeterBJ]

Thank you very much for the report .

Checking driver availability and other info about the printer at a Canon website, it seems that the newest available driver is for 32 bit Win2k/ME/XP, no 64 bit drivers are available. I also noticed that the printer uses the BCI-3e cartridge set, not the newer BCI-3e/6 cartridge set and that the newest driver is dated 2003.

I would expect that this printer could not work under Windows 10, so this was a positive surprise. The situation with running old Canon printers under Windows 10 is luckily much better than their "No driver available" or "No guarantee that an older driver will work" messages suggest .

I don't know if you have the service manual, but this post has a link to an archive with circuit diagrams, service manuals and parts catalogs for Canon MP700 and MP730.

It seems that older Canon printers are "Win 10 friendly" even if it is not official. I would like to know if the situation is the same for other brands of printers, so if you have successfully installed an Epson or HP or other brand of printer not supported under Win 10, please write a report.

 

[stratman]

I had noticed something surprising - to me, at least - after my upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1. I use an application called Total Uninstall when I install programs. TI records all changes made to the hard drive during the installation of a program, the idea being that a future uninstall of that program will be more thorough using Total Uninstall than the installed program's own uninstaller. It is true and works.

The surprising thing was I had expected all the log files for the programs installed under Total Install in Windows 8.1 would be worthless in the newly upgraded Windows 10 since it's a new Operating System with, ostensibly, changes to file structure/handling. Wrong. Total Uninstall not only carried over in the upgrade (I did not have to reinstall like I did with CCleaner and my Canon printer driver) but also worked exactly as it did in Windows 8.1! This meant that the new operating system uses same-similar file structure as the older OS.

Had a discussion with an IT guy knowledgeable about Windows 10 last week. He was not surprised that Total Uninstaller worked. To simplify greatly, seems that Windows 10 is a mash up of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 with tweaks and upgrades but is not an entirely new rewrite.

For whatever reason, printer drivers do not carry over from the old OS during the upgrade process. However, since the backwards compatibility remains in Windows 10 as it did in Windows 7 and 8.1, albeit requiring a workaround typically to install older drivers, there is good reason to believe old printers should install and function.

As to turbguy's printer sharing issue, this is an excellent reminder that installing printer drivers anew means everything is at default settings until we change them. Everything worked as should be expected, which is a good thing.

Congrats to @turbguy on your successful upgrade! Windows 10 is definitely an improvement.