Absolute Beginners Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC

Upgrade #1: Installing a Printer

Hooking up your printer is a piece of cake. Most older printers connect to your PC's parallel port which is why this connection is often called a printer port. Some newer printers (and almost all of the combo machines) connect via USB. Both types of connections are relatively easy to make.

Follow these steps:

1. Connect your printer to a power source and turn it on.

2. Fill the printer's paper tray and install the ink or toner cartridge.

3. If you're connecting to a parallel port, close Windows and power down your PC. If you're connecting to a USB port, skip this step and leave your PC running.

   tip

   If you can't find your printer's driver listed in the Windows printer list, there are some generic drivers you can use. For example, if you have a laser printer, you can select the HP LaserJet driver because most laser printers can emulate the original Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printer. If worse comes to worst, choose the Generic Generic/Text Only driver, which will provide basic text printing for virtually any printer.

4. Connect your printer to the appropriate port on your PC.

5. If you connected to the parallel port, power up your PC. (Naturally, if you connected to a USB port, skip this step.)

6. Windows should automatically recognize your new printer and attempt to install the appropriate driver; you might need to insert your printer's installation disk at this point. Now is also the time to run any installation program that came with your printer.

If Windows, for any reason, doesn't automatically recognize your new printer, you can use the Add Printer Wizard to add the device to your system. To launch the wizard, click the Start button, and then select Printers and Faxes. When the Printers and Faxes window appears, select Add Printer in the Printer Tasks pane. Follow the onscreen instructions to choose your printer brand and model, and then install the appropriate drivers.

By the way, Windows lets you install multiple printers on your system, and choose between them when it comes time to print which is great if you want one unit for heavy-duty document printing and another for fancy color printing. Just repeat these instructions to install additional printers.

note

Configuring Your Printer

After the printer is installed, you can then configure a myriad number of options within Windows that will affect the way your printer prints. To open the Windows printer configuration utility, click the Start button and select Printers and Faxes; when the Printers and Faxes window appears, right-click the icon for your printer, and then select Properties from the pop-up menu.

The Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 8.1, contains a half-dozen tabs of settings for you to play with, including options for print sharing and port assignments and color management (on color printers). Because each type of printer has different options, I can't tell you exactly what you'll see in your specific Properties dialog box. I will tell you, however, that the default options are generally acceptable, unless you have some really unique printing needs.

Setting Your Default Printer

If you have multiple printers installed on your system, you need to select one of them as your main, or default, printer. The default printer is the printer that your applications automatically use for printing, unless instructed otherwise.

To set one of the printers as your default printer, open the Printers and Faxes window, right-click on that printer's icon, and select Set as Default from the pop-up menu. The default printer will always appear with a large black check mark in the Printers Window, and come up first in your printer list when you go to print from any Windows program.