How to Fix Unable to detect printer during driver installation

Question:

My printer’s driver is unable to recognize that my printer is connected. It would be highly appreciated if you could help.

Answer:

Sure, I am Ashok and I’ll help you with some possible ways to fix unable to detect printer while installing its driver. To fix this issue, continue reading the article.

There are two possibilities when an installer doesn’t detect the printer.

• Possibility 1: The computer is detecting the printer but the driver installation doesn’t detect it. (That movement when driver installer will ask you to connect the printer).
• Possibility 2: Your computer is not detecting the printer.

First, determine that you are in the first scenario or the second one. To check it, follow the below-given solutions.

Diagnose:

• Disconnect your printer’s USB cable from the computer side.
• Open device manager.

  

  

• Make sure your printer is turned ON.
• Connect your printer’s USB cable to the computer and meanwhile look at the device manager screen. Do you see any new activity registered in the device manager since you connect the printer? See this screenshot.
• Repeat step 1 and then step 4 multiple times to double-check the detection issue.

Screenshot

Findings:

• If your computer detects your printer properly in the device manager then apply solution1.
• If the device manager couldn’t detect your printer then apply solution 2.

Solution 1:

1. Step 1: Switch the printer’s USB port — unplug the printer’s USB cable from the computer and reconnect it again to another USB port of the computer.
2. Step 2: Reinstall USB Drivers — Go to the device manager and uninstall all the USBs from there. After that, click on the “action” menu and click on “Scan for hardware changes”.
3. Step 3: Run installer with administrative privileges – Close the driver installer and then right-click on its EXE file and then click on the “Run as administrator” option.

Solution 2:

1. Step 1: Make sure your printer’s USB cable is connected properly on both ends.
2. Step 2: Make sure the printer is turned ON properly.
3. Step 3: Switch the computer’s USB port — unplug the printer’s USB cable from the computer and then reconnect it again to another USB port of the computer.
4. Step 4: Power drain the printer.

Step 5: Replace the printer’s USB cable. If you have applied all the above steps with no success, then it could be a hardware issue. Try to replace your printer’s USB cable.

In this article, we have seen how we can diagnose when an installer doesn’t recognize your printer.

Solution 3:

For this solution, we are referring you to a webpage link where we have described what to do when the printer driver is unable to detect the printer. Check out this article here: https://www.freeprintersupport.com/how-to-troubleshoot-a-usb-printer-connection/

The above solution can be fixed following errors:

• My computer cannot find the printer.

Share your experience, suggestion, or ask your query in the comments section down below.