Manually installing drivers - location in W7? Help!  

Hi all, I'm having trouble installing drivers for a Canon S520 printer on a new machine with W7 Home Premium, SP1 (6.1.7601). I'm aware that this printer (and Canons in general) are sometimes a nightmare to install on W7, and I've checked out a number of solved threads without success.

The printer isn't detected when plugged in via USB (only port available, no serial), and no amount of installing seems to work - there's nothing on the Canon USA site, and the installer from Canon Europe doesn't do anything (even when running under Vista compatibility mode, as suggested).

I've downloaded a set of drivers off Microsoft Update Catalogue, which has worked for someone else (in Canon S520 printer driver), but now I have a bunch of dlls, gpds etc, with no idea where to put them, as there's no installer as such. Can anyone help? I've been having dramas with this printer for about five years : P...ta!

If you have a spare USB cable I'd try swapping cables. Power cords plugged in and the printers turned on, I'm assuming yes but I'll ask anyway just to be sure. Does that printer work OK on anther PC?

nitroman84 said:

It may not be the answer you want to hear. But the last time I went to buy cartridges for an old printer I found a new printer (with cartridges) was about the same price as replacements for the old one. Maybe it's time for an upgrade

It looks like they are starting to catch on to that line of thinking. I've noticed a lot of ink-jet and even laser printers come with "starter" ink and toner cartridges in the box. They are reduced capacity compared to the full off the shelf replacement cartridge. They usually print slightly more than half the pages of a full cartridge. I have in the past just bought a new printer instead of two ink cartridges. If I was going to spend that kind of money, it seemed like a good time to upgrade. I have an all in one now so I'll just buy ink until it stops working. My laser printer is a really old brother that will likely get replaced when it finally runs out of tonner.

This is the file you need to point when asked,

If PRNCA00r.inf is the "primary driver file" that starts the installation process for the Canon S520, you might refer to this other thread for installing drivers for the Canon S900 which also starts off pointing to PRNCA00r.inf. For the S900 this driver file was retrieved from the Microsoft Updates Catalog site, just as you've done for the S520... at least to get started.

Turns out there are "secondary driver files" required for the S900 (and possibly for your S520), and in the case of the S900 they were NOT included in the Win7 Installation DVD... in my opinion a manufacturing defect.

However the needed secondary drivers for the S900 ARE provided in the Vista Installation DVD, in a package named PRNCA001.inf. So if you have access to a Vista Installation DVD, you can use a program like WinMount to extract PRNCA001.inf from it and then point to it for your secondary driver request on Win7... at least that's how it worked for the S900. The Vista driver file for these Canon printers CAN be used for Win7, in my experience.

Again, look for details by reading the other thread on the S900 that I pointed to above. I provided a step-by-step recipe there.