Easy Troubleshooting For ‘Printer Driver Is Unavailable’ on Windows 10

Sometimes when you give a print command and your printer doesn’t print, what could be the reason? This can happen for various reasons and one of them could be “The driver is not available”. Even most of the HP users have complained that their printer driver is not available. This error means that your computer could not recognize your printer, so you will not be able to print or scan until the problem is resolved.

Before we go into the solutions, let us understand what it means when the driver is not available.

• The printer driver is out of date.
• The installed driver is corrupted
• You have not installed Windows updates

4 Ways to Fix Printer Driver Is Not Available in Windows 10

So if you can’t find the printer driver in Windows 10, you can try the troubleshooting tips provided later in this guide:

1. Get the updates for Windows 10

If your system does not have the required updates, you might keep getting the Driver is not available error over and over again. So, if your Windows 10 is getting outdated, make sure you get the updates to fix the problem by doing the following:

• Click on the ‘Start’ menu; enter ‘Update’ in the search box and click ‘Check for updates’ in the results.
• If updates are available, Windows will get them automatically.
• After Windows finishes updating, reboot your system.
• Try to print a document and see if the error has been fixed.

Uninstall and reinstall the printer

If you are still looking for help, you may need to uninstall your printer and then reinstall it. Here are the steps for the same:

• Press the ‘Windows key’ and ‘R’ at the same time to bring up the dialog and press ‘enter’.
• In the control panel, out of the given options; look for ‘Devices and Printers’.
• You will see the list of all printers, right click on the printer and click ‘Remove device’.
• Press Windows + R, type ‘devmgmt.msc’ and go to ‘Print Queues’ option. Right click on your printing device and click ‘Uninstall device’.
• Again press Windows + R, type ‘appwiz.cpl’ in the box and press Enter. From the list of all applications, right click on your printer applications and press ‘Uninstall’.
• Once you are done with all the steps above, disconnect your printer from the computer if it is connected via USB, or disconnect it from the router if it is connected wirelessly. Turn off the computer, printer, and router by unplugging the power source.
• After 10 minutes, reconnect everything and start all the modules. Connect the printer and the computer via a USB cable. Let it detect the printer and then start installing the necessary drivers.
• Go back to Control Panel, right click on the printer and click ‘Set as default printer’. Try printing a test page and see if the problem with the driver is fixed.

Reinstall the printer driver

If the error persists, your device may be missing a driver or damaged. Installing the latest driver for your printer may be the solution to this problem. This is how you can install the latest driver for your printer:

• Press the ‘Windows key’ plus ‘R’ together to open the ‘Run’ dialog.
• In the dialog, enter devmgmt.msc and click ‘OK’.
• Find your printer driver, right click on it and select ‘Uninstall’.
• Click ‘Uninstall’ to confirm the action.
• After uninstalling the driver, you can visit the manufacturer’s website to get the latest version for your printer.
• Download and install the selected printer driver on your device.
• Thereafter, check if the issue with the driver is resolved.

Manual reinstallation of the printer driver

This can also happen because the printer was working fine, but due to one of the Windows update, it broke and started showing “Printer driver is not available”. Driver updates provided by Windows may not work for all devices.

If this happens, try updating the printer drivers manually. For this, you need to manually update the selected driver and then disable Windows from updating the printer driver.

Before you begin, go to the manufacturer’s website and download the necessary drivers for your hardware to an available location, and then continue with the steps listed below:

• Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog, type ‘devmgmt.msc’ and press Enter.
• This will open the device manager, go through the hardware and open the ‘Print Queues’ submenu. Right click on the printer hardware and choose ‘Update Driver’.
• A dialog will appear asking how you want to update your driver. Click the ‘Browse my computer for driver software’ option.
• Select the downloaded file and update it accordingly. For some, the printer may not be accessible in device manager. In such cases, just run the installer and the driver will be installed automatically.
• Check if the printer works well, if yes, please go to Microsoft official website and download the “wushowhide.diagcab” package. After that, run the package and click ‘Next’. Of
• From the given options select ‘Hide Updates’. Then select printer update, and thereafter Windows update will not update printer drivers automatically until prompted.

All of the above troubleshooting methods can be applied to most printer drivers, such as HP, Brother, Canon, and others, except for one small difference.

Categories: Technology
Source: SCHOOL TRANG DAI