Q&A Monday: 64 bit Print Driver on 32 Bit System

PrinterQuestion:

I’m trying to add a 64 bit driver, for our existing 32bit printer shares on our Windows 2008 Server.  When I try to add 64 bit drivers for the printer, I browse out to the 64 bit driver, and I get a prompts stating: “the specified location does not contain the driver for the requested processor architecture”.  Another coworker tried another method, but it wanted nprint.inf to install it.  Is it not possible to install an x64 version of a printer driver on a x86 server?

Timothy N. Palmer
Dunwoody, GA

Answer:

Without describing the full process of adding it, I want to make sure that we are on the same page.  Please try the following steps on the print server.

  1. Open Print Management from the Administrative Tools folder on the client computer running an 64 bit version of Windows.
  2. Right-click the printer to which you want to add additional printer drivers, and then click Manage Sharing.
  3. Click Additional Drivers.
    1. The Additional Drivers dialog box appears.
  4. Select the check box of the processor architecture for which you want to add drivers.
    1. In your instance this would be x64.

If the print server does not already have the appropriate printer drivers in its driver store, Windows prompts you for the location of the driver files. If you haven’t already, download and extract the appropriate driver files (make sure they are 64 bit), and then in the dialog box that appears, specify the path to the .inf file of the driver. The driver files you install must match the drivers installed on the print server (the printer name must be identical as well as the driver version).

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If you have any questions that you want Jim to answer, from business servers to home computers, drop him a line at me@jimguckin.com, and he’ll try to answer your question. Check back every Monday for a new Question and Answer session, and during the rest of the week for his other technical insights.

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