Windows Update borks elderly printers in typical Patch Tuesday style Microsoft's latest batch of software updates for Windows has been blamed for a mysterious ailment befalling some poor old Epson dot-matrix printers. Reg readers let us know that, after installing this week's Patch Tuesday payload from Redmond, their Windows boxes no longer work with Epson's dot matrix printers (which are still …
"I doubt the owners of these systems are too bothered about splitting hairs. "
A printer not working is not in anyway an OS "stability problem". It might be annoying if you are impacted but it's hardly splitting hairs to realise that.
Not to mention that anyone in any sort of managed environment should still be testing this month's patches and not yet deploying to production....
Upgrade your hardware..... Exactly what we were told to do years ago when MS Vista failed to support a large format A0 design office printer. I don't know what these cost today, but back then they cost about £3000.
Then we discovered that Ubuntu/CUPS did support the printer, so we updated our software instead, and have not looked back since.
Yep, I recall at the time I was looking for a new PC, but MS and the all the hardware manufacturers had colluded and decided that Vista = new hardware all round. For example my perfectly good scanner that worked fine with XP would be deliberately not supported in Vista due to a lack of drivers.
So in the end I got myself a Mac and could still use my scanner. I too have not looked back. Every now an again I fire up Win10 in a VM to see what's going on, and am reminded that I made the right choice.
I bought a brand new office printer 6 months before Win7 came out - and found I could only use all its features if I had XP installed; the Win7 driver was the generic M$ job, and the Vista driver was a pile of steaming dung that BSOD'ed anything but a basic print job.
I am now off to dig out my ancient Pana dot matrix, to see if it still works.
I've seen Canon recently scrambling at each release of macOS because Apple changed something and its scanners/printersa and even camera software stopped working.
See for example: https://www.canon-europe.com/support/consumer_products/operating_system_information/?=j+e
Anyway drivers are up to the HW maker, you can't really expect an OS deliver drivers for each and every device ever produced. Especially complex ones like scanners or printers which may have very specific functions.
"Anyway drivers are up to the HW maker, you can't really expect an OS deliver drivers for each and every device ever produced. Especially complex ones like scanners or printers which may have "
You can expect an OS not to dick around with the HAL to such an extent that new drivers are ever needed. Indeed, beyond the occasional "big shift" there is SFA reason for hardware drivers to break. Not that FOSS is always much better (looking at Firefox, that recently fucked over useful API's) but you are not so much at other's mercy if it does change...
The HAL (whish is Windows specific) has nothing to do with drivers, it looks you have no knowledge of drivers development. It's also funny that one reason for the new hardware model was to simplify it, being the older one much more complex - and now some drivers can be implemented in user space.
Sometimes, changes are inevitable, because hardware evolves as well, and kernel has to cope. Or people would complain the OS is outdated.
Apple changes its driver model as it see fits as well - just look on forums for the issues Canon had with the latest releases of macOS. Just Canon worked to fix the issues (and had no issues with Windows, meanwhile). Reputable hardware provider do update their drivers. Others are just happy to force you to buy a new device.
"Anyway drivers are up to the HW maker, you can't really expect an OS deliver drivers for each and every device ever produced. Especially complex ones like scanners or printers which may have very specific functions."
What you can do is ensure that the driver interface is stable. If a new driver interface has to be provided then ensure that some means is available - a shim or the old module - to enable the old one to be used even if it's not the standard.
The functions of an update shouldn't include breaking things that are working legitimately.
Unfortunately this has become forgotten in the IT industry to the extent of various comments here to the effect of "so-what". Then there are complaints, maybe even from the same commentards, that essential medical diagnostics of whatever are still running on XP. And, no, you can't reasonably expect that the customer will just go out and buy the latest whatever the chunk of hardware is. The old one may not yet have performed the body of work for which its purchase was originally justified.
<quote>you can't really expect an OS deliver drivers for each and every device ever produced. Especially complex ones like scanners or printers which may have very specific functions.</quote>
I suspect more and more people do really expect just that. I certainly do. And especially for complex ones (i.e expensive ones) like scanners or printers with very specific functions. An OS choice doesn't give the manufacturer a licence to determine what hardware you should choose. The ever onward strategy of the OS companies is a business choice, they want to generate more revenue. It's worked well for them; I see no problem with requiring some of that revenue to be dedicated to maintaining functionality.
Keeping security patches entirely separate from feature patches might be a good start.
"For example my perfectly good scanner that worked fine with XP would be deliberately not supported in Vista due to a lack of drivers."
I picked up a very nice scanner for free back then through FreeCycle because the user "upgraded" to Vista. It worked very nicely on the current FreeBSD of the time and still does now on the latest FreeBSD 11.
"So in the end I got myself a Mac and could still use my scanner. I too have not looked back. "
Just another comment to make mention of the fact that I know a good number of people so pissed off with apple switching to intel and forcing them to upgrade a shit tonne of really expensive software that they jumped to cheaper PCs when their old powerPC kit needed replaced.
It's hardly colluding between MS and the driver creators. MS gave manufacturers a huge amount of notice the driver model was changing, the manufacturers decided it wasn't economic to create new drivers. In a minority of cases MS realised the hardware was so widespread that drivers simply had to be available.
For a 3K printer, which you'd normally still be paying a service charge on, it's unforgivable the manufacturer wouldn't support it. I don't see why MS should code a driver for what would be an extremely small market, and the manufacturer probably wouldn't appreciate them doing so either, if they're taking the foolish line on pushing new hardware.
Also, saying 'Anything that causes the OS to stop doing what it should be doing' is an error is far too simplistic. Windows 10, 8.1 with certain patches, and possibly 7 too(?) no longer run certain games with specific copy protection. This is because the copy protection made the whole system less stable and secure, so stopping certain games running was deemed better than affecting the entire system.
I'd note I have all manner of Old Shite that isn't supported by modern Windows (i.e. the serial Wacom tablet is attached to an SGI O2 that rarely turns on, running Photoshop 1.0 Irix). In some cases I've been dragged kicking and screaming to use new hardware - I still have CRT monitors and 4:3 TFTs and can tell you these are now poorly supported , even open source is much less accommodating than in their heyday. In other cases, such as old hardware, I'll use converters to get new hardware working on old.
All you can do is look at a manufacturer's behaviour, and decide whether to support them in future or not.
Sometimes AMD graphics cards are cheap, but history shows they will drop support before Nvidia does for their cards. However, their open source documentation is (unfortunately) better than Nvidia's .
Intel kit can be quite solid, but don't expect them to make it as expandable as possible.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad with AMD video hardware. The latest Windows drivers were for Vista, and they worked fine with Windows 10.
Until the "Fall Creators Update", that is. It looks OK until you unplug the charger. It then immediately blue screens. You can't start it up on battery - it blue screens about half way through the boot. The latest Win10 appears to demand that the video driver support some weird API to enable "low power mode".
Luckily, I could back out to the previous build, and use WSUS, so it won't reinstall.
"I have a Lenovo Thinkpad with AMD video hardware. The latest Windows drivers were for Vista, and they worked fine with Windows 10.
Until the "Fall Creators Update", that is."
So there's more compatibility between Vista, 7, 8, and 10 up through the original "Creator's Update" than there is between "Creator's Update" and "Fall Creator's Update," at least as far as the driver is concerned.
That's what's wrong with 10 and "WaaS" in a nutshell. Stability means more than a PC that won't bluescreen or otherwise malfunction in a spectacular way. It also means that what worked in 10 before should work in 10 now... code or platform stability as well as day-to-day operational stability.
When the original Creator's Update landed, it broke some Atom laptop drivers that had, until then, worked fine. When the owners of these machines decided to upgrade to 10, their machines had fully-functioning Windows 10 drivers, so one potential issue that could squelch the upgrade was a non-issue, or so they had thought.
These users hadn't planned on "Windows as a Service." Part of that seems to mean that Microsoft gives itself permission to change everything just because every few months, and in this case break Windows 10 compatibility with Windows 10 drivers. It's annoying that owners of these machines were not able to count on a hardware OEM to supply new drivers (apparently it had to do with the vendor of the onboard GPU Intel had used or built under license on those Atoms), but those machines already had drivers designed for Windows 10.
After receiving much backlash for that breakage, MS agreed to keep supporting those machines with security updates for Creator's Update (the first one) until 2023, when the Windows 8.x the machines had come with would have expired. While better than the deal before, it still was not what the owners of those machines thought they were going to get when they looked and saw that their machines had a full set of Windows 10 drivers. They thought they would be getting mainstream support until 2020 (but then, Windows 8.x buyers also thought they would be getting mainstream support until 2018, but the reality is that it ended July 29, 2015). People and especially businesses need to be able to plan for the future, but MS doesn't care about that, obviously.
In the very next release, the Fall Creator's Update, it hit the news that Razer was advising its users to avoid that version of 10 as it was incompatible with every one of their laptops. Once again, it was a driver issue; Windows 10 was no longer compatible with the Windows 10 drivers on those machines. Another version, another bunch of drivers broken. In this case, it was expected that new drivers would soon be available, but it could just as easily have been another situation like with the Atom laptops.
It's an interesting way to reinstate planned obsolescence in an era where hardware remains viable longer than ever before in terms of performance. If the drivers that worked can be "convinced" to not work, formerly Win 10 compatible hardware becomes obsolete overnight. Wow, that's great! More opportunities for us to spend our money replacing perfectly viable hardware. Gee, thanks, Microsoft, what would we do without you?
"More opportunities for us to spend our money replacing perfectly viable hardware."
In some cases there is nothing to replace with.
But MS doesn't give a sh*t. Seems consumers just love being spanked. You'll see some of them here defending MS.
All the Windows hate is quite amusing. Yes, it's true that in some cases Unix supports printers better than Windows - because someone has made the effort to actively maintain the drivers, whilst the manufacturer decided it wasn't worth it.
It doesn't necessarily mean Unix's driver architecture is universally better - check out how many times the Xorg driver model has changed in the last fifteen years, it's more than Windows. However, because the drivers and various other software (window managers, etc) have been re-written or improved again, and again, the compatibility is supposedly 'better' than Windows. Compatibility is supporting v1.x driver software on v4.x of your OS, not running the extensively re-written v4 of driver software on v4 of the OS, but no-one cares because 'it still works'.
Someone could have done the same under Windows, but obviously no-one could be bothered.
I think the issue many have with Windows is that they change something that doesn't need to be changed, hence break stuff -typically hardrware compatibility. When your expensive hardware suddenly won't work, people get angry. Not having source code of any kind doesn't then help.
Usually the people that think things don't need to be change, are exactly the ones who have hardware that doesn't survive the interface break. People with hardware that does survive the change, and may work faster/better, remarkably are happy with the change..
I haven't moved to Windows 10 for most of my (non work) systems, but I can't deny it has technical improvements under the hood.
A lot of the driver model moved out of the kernel with Vista (display drivers, printer drivers), and Vista SP2/Windows 7 (bluetooth profiles). It led to improved stability and manageability. Later releases improved multithreading and other items.
Go look at the WDDM page on Wikipedia, and then say with a straight face that MS is wasting their time enhancing the display driver model with each release.
Usually the people that think things don't need to be change, are exactly the ones who have hardware that doesn't survive the interface break.
There may be something in that for ya..
People with hardware that does survive the change, and may work faster/better, remarkably are happy with the change..
Actually most probably never notice. And a lot of speed increases in one area are swallowed by slow downs in others. Most obvious example : the machine I have today is easily more than a thousand times faster than my original 286, and has 8GB of ram vs 2MB. Yet to get Windows booted and Wordpad loaded takes LONGER than it used to with the 286. (may've been notepad on the 286, not sure if Wordpad was in with 3.11)
This is for 7. Given the experience I've had with broken 8+ machines, I'd be doing everything I can to turn the fast boot etc options off - the time I save booting (which usually happens while I am making breakfast or a coffee or something) isn't worth the hassle of fighting things when it breaks and the disk is in an "unsafe" state.
I haven't moved to Windows 10 for most of my (non work) systems, but I can't deny it has technical improvements under the hood.
I expect it has had many as well. But the other stuff stopped me moving on - the changes to the UI, telemetry, unstoppable updates (well, at least you used to be able to flag your connection as costly, don't know if that still works or not) - all of the improvements combined are not worth the price of even one item of the bad stuff.
Go look at the WDDM page on Wikipedia, and then say with a straight face that MS is wasting their time enhancing the display driver model with each release.
They wasted their time. Go look at the 10 UI and tell me with a straight face that there is anything there worth improving the background display processes for. (Actually i wonder if that's why they did away with all the eye candy, to remove even the chance of having "processor intensive"1 3d effects, thus making the system appear faster (while it also appears uglier and makes Win1 a step UP in usability - or so we're told)
1 No, not really.
Windows 3.1 was still using Write, Wordpad didn't arrive until Windows 95. I'm not sure which is faster, I've had few problems with fast boot in 8 onwards. Windows 3.x wasn't always that fast, especially if DOS was doing various setup before Windows even started. My slowest computer at home is a 486 for retro gaming, 286s weren't speed demons when I was using them.
As to 10, I'm very unhappy with the fact it's a moving target. I'm not a fan of the flat UI, but the built in virtual desktops are a great improvement, better than the sysinternals option I was using previously.
Personally my main (home) environment is BSD Unix on top of a Linux based Xen environment (I'd rather be using a FreeBSD dom0, but functionality isn't there yet). I'm hoping to move off most Windows functionality, leaving it only for games, so there's another five years before being forced to upgrade to W10 or newer. I don't hold out much hope of Unix gaming becoming a seriously viable thing (although it's better than it was) and Wine compatibility is spotty and not as fast as Windows (people giving Platinum ratings on the Wine AppDB clearly haven't compared with real Windows; when the app runs 'perfectly' but is noticeably slower or less smooth than in real Windows, that's not perfect).
Not since Nadella decided MS has to shove down your throat whatever he likes... today you have to print from the cloud, not with locally connected printers.
Anyway, how they could have borked the simplest printers I don't know - some millennial developer who never saw one, probably.
Unfortunately, dot matrix printers are still current hardware. Many processes still use multi-part forms that require impact printing to carbon copy them.
However the epson ones are probably older so it may be a driver issue. I think the most likely upgrade path would be a brand new OKI dot matrix printer (they are cheaper). In my experience the current OKI model is supported with drivers supplied in windows 10.
Unfortunately, dot matrix printers are still current hardware. Many processes still use multi-part forms that require impact printing to carbon copy them.
That's because stubborn bastards in Finance and accounting departments refuse to join the 21st century. They find their core duties of "adding up " and "taking away" too difficult , partly due to the ridiculous language of accounting they have developed , and now that they've managed to translate that to SAGE et al , they are damned if they're going trough all that setting up again. Probably because theres no one there anymore who understands the adding up and taking away - thy've all retired , what are left are drones who only know specific tasks like "I take this piece of paper out of this printer and put it this pile here , then billy presses this icon on his desktop and it makes this other printer print out.
> That's because stubborn bastards in Finance and accounting departments refuse to join the 21st century.
It is nothing to do with 'Finance and Accounting". The dot matrix printers are in the warehouses to print out the legally required 4 part Hazardous materials forms, delivery dockets, manifests, customs forms and other necessary paperwork.
>> That's because stubborn bastards in Finance and accounting departments refuse to join the 21st century.
> It is nothing to do with 'Finance and Accounting". The dot matrix printers are in the warehouses to print out the legally required 4 part Hazardous materials forms, delivery dockets, manifests, customs forms and other necessary paperwork.
Hardly. There is nothing in legislation that requires impact printing multi part forms. You can just laser print multiple copies. I import a lot of stuff, and I've never seen customs paperwork printed on a dot matrix printer in the last 3 years.
The legislation and regulations are quite dated generally. For instance, three copies of a commercial invoice must be provided for shipments from US to Canada. A long time ago, this due to the fact that Canada Customs would take one, the customs broker would take another, and the final one would be for the recipient. However, Canada Customs and the brokers are all digital now (after all, who is really going to file millions of pieces of paper?), and the three copies are just left in the pouch. But they are still required to be there. Any everyone just laser prints them.
"Hardly. There is nothing in legislation that requires impact printing multi part forms. You can just laser print multiple copies."
No, because you can't trust the copy to be identical unless it's made simultaneously (think sneaky hackers or insiders). There's only one physical way you can ensure that: using copying paper (either carbon copy sheets or chemically-treated carbonless paper).
>No, because you can't trust the copy to be identical unless it's made simultaneously<
Like a book? Laser printer page copies can be made by electrically-refreshing the print drum, or by redrawing the print drum from memory. Secure printers are a specialised type of device, but available.
Memory can be hacked, and most drums don't have enough circumference to electrically store an entire page. Plus it's essentially a black box since you can't actually see this in action (the drum is photo-sensitive so can't be exposed to ambient light when in use).
As I recall, most secure laser printers aren't intended for copying but to produce legally-significant documents and things like checks which require special materials to protect against forgery.
That was going to be my response as well; get an Okidata 320SuperMegaUltraTurbo (or whatever the hell the current iteration of the 320 model is), and just run with it. bloody things are tanks, and simple enough to rebuild when they do finally wear out after running through a pallet or three of three-part paper.
> driver issue
You know a dot matrix printer driver has only one job. To output ASCII characters at the correct speed over a parallel or serial port. All it needs to know is if the paper is 80 or 132 columns wide. It does not need to convert anything to any particular printer language like Postscript or PCL, just plain ASCII. How this single task could be buggered up is beyond me.
Too right. My citizen 120D harks from when it was attached to an atari st. It's been flashing "out of paper" for over a decade. I just realised. It's about two years older than my marriage.
All hail the 120D, best way to tell the power has gone. 120D head sweeps! :-)
"Dot matrix printers are not always operated in text output mode. They do bitmapped graphics too!"
Look up the Epson Standard Code for Printers or ESC/P. Because of the LX-80, it's become the standard control language for impact and other line printers (whereas PCL and PostScript are the standards for page printers). A derivative, ESC/POS, has become the standard for receipt printers.
>To output ASCII characters at the correct speed over a parallel or serial port<
"Dot matrix" is not the same as "Daisy wheel".
The problem is, of course, somewhere with the connection between the Printer Drivers and the OS: the printers didn't suddenly stop working because of an electrical fault.
There are 3 ways to do printer control: (1) Send Windows print script direct to the printer as text. (2) Translate the Windows print script language to Postscript, and send the Postscript script to the printer as text. (3) Translate the Win print script to PCL (hp) or ESC/P (epson), and send the print language to the printer as a series of 7 or 8 bit bytes.
All three methods are used for dot matrix impact printers, dot matrix inkjet printers, and (dot matrix) laser printers.
All three methods commonly send blocks of characters as text (ascii) if the characters will be represented by a native printer font, and as bit-mapped images if the characters will not be represented by a native printer font.
Backward compatibility with drivers should not be a problem. Over the years I have seen devices that worked on version of Bloat not work on the next version. Apparently with every release Slurp likes to fiddle with the device driver model. However these devices worked fine a various current edition Linux distros.
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