Vista & Dell All in One (AIO) printer

I recently upgraded my laptop to Vista Home Premium. Now I can not
print to my Dell 922 AIO. I have downloaded the latest Vista drivers
from Dell. The driver install appears to work fine; however, when I
try to print the queue stacks up and I get a message about not being
able to communicate with the printer, please check the cable, restart,
and other trouble shooting suggestions. No luck...anybody have a
solution? Thanks!

I upgraded to vista with a dell aio 926. It is very important to uninstall
the old driver and DISCONNECT the printer from the system when you install
the new drivers. Have the system up and running with the new drivers
installed then plug in the printer.

You led me down the path I needed to be heading.
The key was to uninstall (completely) and then disconnect from the
network/Internet so Vista couldn't find a driver anywhere to default
to.

This is what worked for me...I got help from farbuncle and a forum on
Dell's website.

1. Download the latest Vista driver.
2. Disconnect the PC from the network/Internet
3. Delete the printer
4. Disconnect the printer from the PC
5. Uninstall the software from Device Manager (you have to choose
view, show hidden devices). Right click on the printer and choose
uninstall.
6. Uninstall the software from the program group or the control panel.
7. Reboot
8. Delete everything in C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\
9. Install the Vista Driver reconnecting the printer when the driver
install calls for it.

I still can't share my printer across the network. If I try to
connect to the printer (attached to an XP SP2 Pro box) the driver
"breaks" and I have to perform the same process all over again. The
same seems to be true if I reverse the connection and share it from my
Vista box. Anyone know of a wireless print server that will support
the Dell 922?

The Dell 3300 Wireless Printer Adapter will work fine.

[cnrogers]

I had a problem that started when I attempted to move my Dell 922 printer from my XP machine to my Vista machine. This printer was happily functioning from both Vista and XP machines when it was connected to the XP machine.

I tried deleting the "w32x86" files and the "twain32" files. Uninstalling the USB Root HUBs from device manager was an interesting approach suggested by another thread on this website. I discovered that there is one USB root hub for each of the seven USB ports on my Dell Desktop. (DUH!!)

Imagine my surprise when my keyboard and mouse stopped working when I started uninstalling them! Given that my machine only has USB interface for peripheral devices I thought I was in serious trouble when my mouse and keyboard stopped working after unistalling the 3rd USB Root HUB.

A reboot should automatically reinstall the USB port drivers but my mouse and keyboard failed to respond. What a catastrophe!

Turns out that after desperately trying several USB ports I could get the keyboard to finally respond but my mouse wouldn't. To make a long story less long I was able to use the keyboard to navigate and with Dell support finally figured out that my mouse batteries had died at the time when I really needed them. It took a couple of hours to discover this embarrassing fact!

I’m lucky that my Vista computer is still under warranty with Dell. It took quite an effort to figure out the dead battery problem with a Dell hardware technician using DellConnect.

Once that issue was resolved I was put through to a Dell printer specialist who clearly understood the printer driver problem. It can be much deeper than simply messing about with files in Windows\System32... There were several registry keys that needed to be deleted before attempting to reinstall the printer drivers.

Future readers of TechArena please note: Messing with REGEDIT should NOT be attempted by anyone who is not familiar with this level of troubleshooting!

Dell support can be frustrating at times but eventually you will get through to someone who knows what they are doing. Thanks Santhosh at Dell for getting to the root of the 922 printer problem.

No thanks to Dell Corporate for not putting the resources into an online Patch/Update that doesn’t do this automatically.

Hope this post helps future victims of obsolete Dell printers