Epson Printer Driver

I seem to be going round in circles here. I have purchased (2nd hand) an Epson Stylus Photo 1290 A3 Inkjet Printer. It has no driver CD with it.


It has a USB connection. We want to install it on our Windows 2003 Server and have access to it over the network. I will mainly be using it from my Windows 7 laptop over the network. There are no driver downloads for Windows 2003 server available on the Epson website (and I have had a live chat session with an Epson technician who said that it will not work on a server). On a Windows 7 machine, you have to use the inbox drivers (i.e. add a printer).


I am thinking that if we attach it to the server and then try the "add a printer" routine it might work...


I have found a few links from searching on Google but am not sure about downloading stuff from unknown websites...


These are two most appropriate that I found:


http://xpdrivers.com/printer/epson/stylus-photo/1290/_5_1824.cfm


http://www.archimedius.net/epson-stylus-photo-1290-series-printer.php



Do any of you techies here have a view on our best way to get this working?


Thanks guys.


Vanessa


That was along the thoughts that I had Nick - could be expensive methinks?

Would it harm the heads if I did the cleaning maintenance many times? Perhaps it needs to be done lots of times to get the ink running thorugh?

If it hasn't been used for a while, then the print heads might need cleaning further. It may well need a visit to a Dealer for a service.

Cheers

Nick

Hi again,

I have at long last cleared a space for it and got it set up. We tried it briefly on the Server but it didn't see it, so bit the bullet and attached it directly to my Windows 7 laptop. It immediately went to download the driver from Windows updates. We did a test print and it talked to the printer and printed a very faint test print page. We tried again after doing the clean print head clean maintenance etc. The software was showing the at the ink cartridges were nearly full (but of course had been in for quite some time without being used). It barely printed anything on the paper. I thought I'd change the cartridges as it seemed that the ink was blocked in some way. Same thing with new cartridges - no ink printing onto the paper.

Any ideas on what to try next?

Thanks in advance...

Thanks for the input guys. I'm just getting forearmed with info at the moment. I have to clear a lot of space to be able to set it up. So no, I haven't actually tried attaching it to the server as yet. I'll keep you informed when I do. Your idea of a print server got me thinking though. We did use one (many years ago) for our old Kyocera Laser printer and the Old Epson Stylus Colour 1520 A3 printer we had and I'm sure we still have it (buried in a cupboard somewhere). However, they used the parallel port and this printer is USB - but I have just checked and it does have a parallel port connector as well.

Again, many thanks.

If the Epson supposts the postscript printing language it could well be possible to select any Epson driver of that type and it might work. Does the windows server even identify the printer as being attached when you plug it in?

The other option , as Steve has said is to go for a device that attaches the printer to the network without the Win2003 server. There are many devices that can either turn your printer into a WIFI connected or LAN connected device and you can then just select it. Once you have done this, you then have the advantage of turning it into a cloud printer using Google Chrome which means you can print to it from anywhere on the Planet.

The Netgear PS 121 is one such device, but there are lots of other choices include the HP jetdirect as mentioned.

Netgear print server

Have no experience with W2003 Server but you could buy a separate printer server and connect that to the network, I found a used HP JetDirect for £28. That way the Win7 machines used their own driver.