Trying to offload good but obsolete kit

[Feanor]

I have a sturdy Dell 5100cn colour laser printer here.

It's a corporate-grade beast, Ethernet connection, large paper tray, duplexer, and capable of large-volume runs without wilting.
But it's big and heavy.

The reason I'm trying to ditch it is that Dell don't support it in Win10.
Previous driver kind-of work, but crash in common use scenarios.

So it's PoS for me now.

Have shoved it on all the Freegle / Frecycycle / Gumtree sites I can be bothered with.
If no takers, then it's going to the dump, which is a great shame.

[Kim]

Can you not speak generic Postscript at it, perhaps via a Linux print server?

[Feanor]

Yes, I could, if I could find a suitable win10 generic driver.

Using the native win7 driver in win10, if it can't communicate with the printer in the 'Win10 way', then all bets are off.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

For example, Office ( word etc ) 32-bit works fine.
Office 64-bit crashes when it attempts to talk to the printer driver.

Other apps seem to bring up different print dialogs.
Those that bring up the traditional print dialog usually work.
Those that bring up the dumbed-down black vertical 'connecting to the printer' dialog usually fail.

I have a new HP colour printer, and need to offload the Dell printer.
But it may be of use to someone who still uses Win 7.

[Kim]

A pox on Windows 10 then!

[Mr Larrington]

A pox on Dell, surely?  A similar pox has been wished on Canon, whose answer to the question "Plz to provide driver 4 teh not-old printer" was "Noes.  Buy new printer!"

[David Martin]

Can it not just do a generic PCL6 or Postscript over the net?

[Feanor]

I'm sure you could; but you'd need to find a suitable Generic driver to install in windows.

Reading on the Internet, I see people have managed to get things half-working with Dell drivers for more recent printers, but not with great success.

[Polar Bear]

Ooo, that's interesting.   Lucky beggars like me can perhaps benefit from Win 10 after all.   

Must dash over to Freegle ...   

[Afasoas]

A charity might appreciate it.

[Ben T]

Would a linux machine be able to print to it? (i.e. from its own desktop, not acting as a proxy)

[Feanor]

Almost certainly.
I expect you can just talk PS or PCL at it on port 9100 using generic drivers.

It's getting picked up tomorrow by a Gumtree user who works in a local charidee.

[freeflow]

Mine is working perfectly OK with Windows 10 64 bit. Anything I can help with. I print using a network connection.

[Feanor]

Try printing from any 64-bit version of office 2013 / 2016.
(Google: 1 million hits... )

64-bit office will crash the driver under windows 10 ( or win8, apparently ) 64-bit.
32-bit office works OK.

This is using the most recent Win7 x64 driver from Dell's website.

Example:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3528/t/19475274

In general, any apps that call the traditional Windows Print Dialog will work fine.
Printer test page works fine.
Apps that use the 'modern' print dialog may hang up spinning their wheel at 'contacting printer', but it's a bit hit-or-miss, depends on the app.
64 bit office just blows up.

[freeflow]

I used to have problems but all seems OK now.  I check and report back when I get home on Sunday.

[Feanor]

It's not my problem now.

The printer is in the garage, awaiting pickup.
Best of luck to anyone else using it.

It's possible Dell put fixed drivers on Windows Update, whilst not making them available for general download.
I didn't see them, but I have windows update disabled for drivers via group policy from the Domain Controllers.

[Feanor]

It's been collected, and by someone who seemed to have a decent clue about how network printers work.

I've just installed the replacement HP M552dn, and it's pretty sweet.