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Samsung Printer GripesThe ML-4500 is a Black/White laser printer |
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FYI: The problem described below about Windows re-installing an existing printer every time it starts up is not unique to this printer. The August 15, 2005 edition of The Langa List newsletter had an item about this happening to an HP all-in-one printer/copier/scanner. The item, however, is in the Plus! edition of the newsletter, which is only available to paid subscribers.
August 17, 2005. There has been an update to the Windows printer driver for the ML4500. It was last changed June 17, 2005.
November 20, 2003. This printer pre-dates Windows XP. With any such printer, the question is: Is there a printer driver for it that works with Windows XP? This should be an easy question to answer from the Samsung web site. Nope. I found three web Samsung web pages that should answer this simple question. They said: yes, no and I don't know.
Windows XP does not ship with a driver for this printer. It does have one for the ML-4600, but not for the ML-4500.
Initially, I didn't bother with this issue, but got forced into paying attention to it. When I first installed the printer on a Windows XP machine, I used the software CD that came with the printer. It auto-runs under XP when inserted into the computer and starts up a little application that installs the printer driver. All appeared fine during the software installation and the printer printed without incident.
Every time the computer boots however, Windows XP finds a new printer. What new printer? The one it already knows about, the Samsung ML-4500. After a few days, this gets annoying, especially since Windows never can install the driver for the "new" printer it thinks it found. Despite this annoyance at start-up time, the printer continued to print just fine.
Then I downloaded the latest version of the printer driver. At least, I think it's the latest version. On the download page Samsung does not identify the version/release of the printer drivers. I uninstalled the printer by right clicking on it in the Printers Applet and selecting Delete from the pop-up window.
Now what? The Samsung printer driver download page has no instructions for installing the printer driver.
I ran the downloaded .EXE printer driver and it
unzips a bunch of files as shown here. There is, of course, no readme file
with instructions. There is, however, a setup.exe
file in
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| As shown here on the right, this started to install the printer driver. |  |
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It didn't get very far before I got the error shown here An error occurred during the move process: -115 |
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I was able to run the same setup.exe file on a Windows 2000 computer without problem. This at least showed me that the software was version 3.04 from the year 2000. It's not at all clear that this software will work with Windows XP. Looking at the printer properties, the Sharing tab and clicking on the Additional Drivers button showed nothing at all about Windows XP.
Back to Samsung's web site where I found instructions on how to install the printer driver in Windows XP. These instructions bore no resemblance at all to the install procedure I had just gone through. There is no screen shot of the unzipping and it has wrong instructions for where to pick up the printer driver. The files are unzipped to C:\Samsung Printer\ML4500 but the instructions show them in a WINXP folder. The instructions also show a file SSGS1.INF that does not exist when you unzip the printer driver. In fact, there are no INF files at all in this directory, rendering the instructions both wrong and useless.
What to do?
I tried installing the same drivers on another Windows XP computer, one that did not actually have the printer attached to it. The install went fine.
I filled out a tech support web page asking for help and giving the details of the above error. When I clicked on the Send button, nothing happened.
As with everything else here, the fact that clicking on the Send button did nothing, was not true. It must have sent the message because a few hours later, Samsung responded. They send a printer driver for Windows XP and install instructions. The printer driver was a Zip file. Lo and behold, it has an ssgs1.info file in it. This later turned out to be version 4.08.
Gripe: If there is a version 4 of the printer driver, why is version 3 on the Samsung web site for everyone to download?
Later digging around the Samsung web site turned up totally different printer driver install instructions. These instructions match my experience using the setup.exe file in the printer driver I downloaded.
Just to keep track, there are now three different printer driver installation procedures: 1) Using the software CD that came with the printer 2) Running the setup.exe program with the v3.04 software and 3) Using the Windows XP Add Printer Wizard. It couldn't be more confusing if that was Samsung's intent.
November 28, 2003. Round two.
I uninstalled the driver from the CD-ROM that came with the printer and got this error
Unable to delete folder
'C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\2'
 Then I rebooted and installed the new v4.08 driver. It didn't fix the problem, even with new driver, Windows XP still found a new ML-4500 printer at every boot. I went through the new hardware found wizard and it failed to install another ML-4500 printer. You can see the result here on the right. At the end of the wizard there is a checkbox that says never to try and install the software again. I checked it and rebooted but it still detected a new ML-4500 printer at the next start-up. Searching Google turned up this Microsoft KB article: The New Hardware Wizard May Detect the Printer Device After Every Restart of the Computer |
Climax: The climax of this story is that I fixed the problem by installing another (virtual) printer and telling Windows XP it was an ML-4600 printer, a model that XP has a built-in driver for. Despite the fact this is wrong (there was no such printer attached to the computer), the installation of the non-existent printer went fine and, for whatever reason, it got rid of the problem of a new printer being detected at every system startup.
This page has generated more than its share of comments from readers:
February 26, 2006. A reader named Don wrote that he found a reference to an ML-4500 Driver for
Windows XP SP2 that worked for him.
http://erms.samsungusa.com/customer/sea/jsp/faqs/faqs_view.jsp?PG_ID=1&AT_ID=8188&PROD_SUB_ID=29&PROD_ID=29
August 18, 2005. Another reader had the above procedure (from May 23rd) fix her problem. Starting with a new install of Windows XP Pro, she updated to SP1, then to SP2. The printer worked, but on every re-boot the add new hardware wizard started and when she went to install with the CD from the printer, Windows complained that she had an improper INF file.
July 24, 2005. A reader of this page said the above 11 steps did not fix his problem. In his case, the problem was fixed by installing the printer as an ML4600 when prompted to install new hardware. Pretending his ML4500 is actually a 4600 model works fine.
October 27, 2004. Another reader reported that while this did solve the redetection problem, it created another problem. The computer connected to the printer was running Windows XP SP2 and it was networked to another XP machine. The second computer uses the printer by detecting it as a network printer. This worked prior to the above driver but not afterwards. When the second PC tries to print anything it now reboots as soon as you press print.
May 23, 2004. A reader of this page, experiencing the same problem, wrote to say that if he powers up the printer after booting Windows, all is well (thanks Paul). He also forwarded an email that he says is from Samsung regarding this issue with their printer driver:
December 23, 2003. Another reader of this site suggested the following, which I have not tried:
December 15, 2003. A reader of this web wrote to tell me about this web page with links to a Lexmark printer driver that may fix the problem on new hardware always being detected in Windows XP.
August 12, 2004. I downloaded the EXE version of the printer driver from the main Samsung Printers page (see above). When you run it, it unzips a bunch of files into C:\Samsung Printer. Then nothing. No instructions as to what to do next. No readme file amongst the unzipped files. I ran the setup.exe file from January 1999 and it worked fine.
Samsung has a Doctor Printer web site
that may help you diagnose printing problems. (added October 6, 2005)
| Created: November 20, 2003 | Page last updated: February 27, 2006 |