Vista printer debacle solved 18 months on

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Jun 2008 at 14:00

A Seattle pensioner who became something of a figurehead for the failings of Windows Vista has finally got his printer to work with the troublesome operating system.

Charles Walling became a minor internet celebrity when the SeattlePI reported his ongoing printer problems on the first anniversary of Vista's launch.

Walling accidentally installed the XP drivers for his Dell 942 printer on to his new Vista machine. This wrote files to locations in Vista that were now locked down as part of Microsoft's drive to make Vista more secure. This, of course, meant that when Mr Walling tried to uninstall the driver, the files remained stubbornly locked in the operating system.

When Mr Walling finally got a Vista driver for his printer, it couldn't dislodge the old XP software, placing the pensioner in something of a catch 22.

All of this was only discovered with the personal help of Tom White, Microsoft's test manager for documents and printing, who visited Mr Walling's house several times to get to the bottom of the problem - which is a step-up from Microsoft's standard level of tech support.

Dell has subsequently released a patch that clears old drivers out of Vista machines, and Microsoft's trying to persuade Dell to include the patch in all of its driver installation software packages.

Little wonder, then, that Dell plans to defy June's XP cut-off date.