Canon MP780 Driver Issue  

I have a Windows 7 laptop and had similar problems. I tried finding the printer on the network and adding - went to Windows Update, could not find driver. Tried installing Windows 7/Vista drivers from Canon - didn't work. Tried unzipping XP drivers from Canon and then adding the printer and manually browsing to that directory. Didn't work.

What worked. Plugging in printer to USB port. It automatically detected and installed the fax drivers, but not the printer drivers. Followed the suggestions on this other thread and it worked - particularly tip from ishahmael. I used USB001 or something like that - not sure if it matters.

Then, I disconnected the USB, plugged it back into the desktop it's usually attached to and tried the above again. Still no luck, still couldn't find drivers (even though they were already installed!). Followed adamk's suggestion above re: creating a local port and using the share name and it worked like a charm. When I browsed Windows Update, it found the correct driver almost instantaneously.

YMMV.

Nice work, thanks.

I had a setup where the printer server was Win7 x64 and I was trying to print from a WinXP x86 PC on the network. I couldn't get the normal sharing process to work because it couldn't find the appropriate x86 driver when I was trying to add the printer on the x64 server and of course, the Canon downloadable driver is just an installation program and does not allow you to see the drivers. Anyway, after much stuffing around, I was finally able to get it working via AdamK's solution.

Here's a workaround:
1. Open the Devices and Printers folder.
2. Click on "Add a Printer".
3. Click "Add a local printer".
4. Select "Create a new port". The type of port should be "Local Port". Click Next.
5. Enter the remote print share name, e.g. "\\server\Canon Inkjet MP780 Series" and press Enter.
6. Select the Canon Inkjet MP780 Series driver.
7. Go through and finish adding the printer.

Thanks to AdamK's solution I was able to get my Canon BJC1000 printer to print! My printer is really old and connected through a parallel port on a Windows XP machine over the network and I was trying to print from my new laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

I had the same problem as previous posters who said that Windows could not install the driver when it looked for it on Windows update and yet when I searched the Windows drivers available on my machine I knew it already had them. Strange, it seems like there is a disconnect with Windows when you try to install an older Canon printer over the network.

Also, I want to mention that I did have a little hiccup initially when I tried to print for the first time over the network from the Windows 7 laptop. It would not print because the default setting for the Windows 7 driver is to have the COLOR ink cartridge installed and I am only using BLACK ink. It did not print until I physically went to my computer that has the printer attached to it and saw the error message. Now that I have adjusted the Printer Properties on the Windows 7 machine to default to Black ink, I can now print consistently without fail from my laptop over the wireless network.

So thank you for allowing me to salvage some life out of my old printer which still works great.

Cheers!