Managing Devices with Devices And Printers

If you're a Windows veteran, you might be accustomed to digging through layers of Control Panel to do such things as change the pointer speed of your mouse or the repeat delay of your keyboard. You might also have made an occasional visit to Device Manager to see why a device isn't working as expected. You can still do all that in Windows 7, of course, but Devices And Printers might save you some of these trips.

Most essential configuration tasks for your printers and other hardware are now available via context menus in Devices And Printers. For some devices, such as monitors, keyboards, and mice, you'll find a settings command at the top of the menu:

For complex devices, such as your computer itself, you'll find a rich assortment of options, some of which (Mouse Settings and Keyboard Settings, for example) duplicate commands found on individual peripherals:

Three commands are common to all of these context menus: Create Shortcut, Troubleshoot, and Properties. Devices that aren't working properly are flagged with yellow exclamation points; the same familiar symbol highlights their Troubleshoot commands:

The Create Shortcut command plants a shortcut on your desktop, which makes the device's context menu accessible outside of Devices And Printers. If you create a shortcut to the entry for your computer, for example, you can right-click that shortcut to go straight to such places as Sound Settings or Power Options.

The Properties command provides an alternative route to the dialog boxes that have traditionally been provided by Device Manager.

1. Managing Printers and Print Queues

To configure a printer or work with a print queue, click the printer in Devices And Printers. Depending on the type of printer, you will see either a simple printer-queue dialog box or something more elaborate like the one shown in Figure 2.

The top part of this display provides status information. In Figure 24-2, for example, we see that the HP Officejet is set to print in portrait mode on letter-size paper and currently has nothing to do. The options below let you inspect and manipulate the print queue, change print settings (switch from portrait to landscape, for example), and work with the printer's Properties dialog box.

2. Installing a Printer

To install a local printer that plugs into a USB port, you don't need to do anything in the Printers And Devices folder. Simply connect the device, and Plug and Play will do the rest . For information about installing a local printer that doesn't meet these standards, see the following section.

To make a networked printer available locally, click Add A Printer on the Devices And Printers toolbar. Then, in the Add Printer wizard, select the second option, Add A Network, Wireless Or Bluetooth Printer, and click Next. The wizard will scan the network for available printers:

Select the printer you want to install, and click Next. Because Windows requires a local copy of the network printer's driver, you are likely to see a dialog box similar to the following:

Click Install Driver. In a moment, you'll receive a success message and be given the opportunity to make the new printer your default.

3. Installing a Non–Plug and Play Printer

Printers that physically attach through a non–Plug and Play connection, such as a parallel port, might require some extra setup work. If the printer driver package includes a setup program, run it first. Then open Devices And Printers and click Add A Printer. In the Add Printer wizard, click Add A Local Printer.

To complete the setup process, you need to first specify the port to which the printer is attached. For most older printers that attach to a parallel port, the correct choice is LPT1.

Click Next to select the correct driver. You can choose from a list of drivers available in the Windows 7 driver store (shown in Figure 3). This list should include any drivers you installed by running a setup program. If you have downloaded a printer driver that doesn't include a setup program, click Have Disk and browse to the correct location. If you don't have a driver, or if you suspect a more recent version might be available, click Windows Update to check Microsoft's collection of updated, signed drivers; after the update is complete, check the list again to see if your printer model is available.

The final step in the printer setup process is giving the printer a name. The default name typically includes the manufacturer's name and printer model; you can change this value to a more descriptive name now or later.