This isn’t one of those sarcastic items you see quite often on websites like The Onion. It required a big man from Microsoft to visit a consumer’s place along with some help from the printer manufacturer to set the printer working on MS Vista.

An article was posted by Todd Bishop earlier this year regarding Charles Walling unable to use his Dell printer after purchasing a Vista ready PC from Dell.

After reading the story, Windows test manager, Tom White paid a personal visit to Mr.Walling and got down to the bottom of the problem. The issue was resolved and the crux is as follows:

Mr.Walling bought a Dell PC with Vista preloaded on it. He used the installation discs from Dell 942 printer which he used with his previous PC. The disc was compatible with XP but installed anyways on Vista without any warning or error messages. The printer ultimately did not work.

Here’s White’s explanation – “…the older Dell installation program tried to write files to locations in Windows Vista that Microsoft had locked down as part of its attempt to make the new operating system more secure. So those files were instead directed to different locations in the system, complicating matters for any program attempting to remove them.”

Although Mr.Walling had upgraded the printer driver to Vista, the problem still persisted. Due to incompatibility issues, older XP drivers still remained on the system and attempts to uninstall older drivers failed. So, neither driver would work.

As an afterthought, Dell has released a patch to delete XP drivers from Vista machine which allowed the prevailing problem to be solved.

So, be careful before you go ahead and install your printer on Vista. Check and double check the drivers whether they are compatible with Vista. Dell obliged to release a patch, others may not.

via Todd Bishop’s Blog