Installing printers

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Install your added printers on computers in your system with uploaded driver packages before you can centrally manage your printing preferences, see printer statuses, and manage print queues from Control Center.

  • Before you install printers, connect your computers to Control Center. Read more in Computers.

  • Before you install printers, upload your driver packages to Control Center. Read more in Driver Packages.

An installed printer is a printer connected to a computer with a driver through an installation process. You start the process by installing a printer driver on a computer and using it to create a print queue. When you browse "installed" printers in your Windows Control Panel, you aren't actually viewing printers, you're viewing the print queues your drivers create on your computer during the installation process. You can manage this process centrally for your computers, printers, and driver packages in Control Center.

  1. Go to Control Center > Printers > Printers and click Install Printers. The Install Printers window opens.

    [Note] Note

    If you can't click Install Printers you may need installation rights for this printer, or the printer may be shared.

    A user that runs the Loftware Proxy service, must have rights to install printers.
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  2. Select which printers to install and click Next. If you don't see your printer, click Refresh to update your list of available printers.

    [Note] Note

    You can't install printers without Loftware printer drivers. Read more about drivers: Driver Packages.

  3. Choose the computers to install your printers on and click Next.

    [Note] Note

    You can install printers on offline computers marked "Ready when online". Installation begins when these computers come back online.
    [Note] Note

    You can't install printers on computers using older versions of Designer, for example V2019 or V2017. Such computers are greyed out in the list of computers.
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  4. Review or update your printer queue and port configurations, and click Next.

    [Note] Note

    You may not be able to edit some printer queue names.
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  5. Select a printer driver package for each printer family from your uploaded drivers and click Next. Toggle + and - (on your left) to see more details and the effects your installation may have on your system.

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    [Note] Note

    Using different driver versions for the same printer families may produce conflicts.

    When you select your driver package, your printer Status updates. Check your status before you install your printer:

    1. Installs new printer. No side effects.

    2. Updates printer driver. Requires print spooler restart. Interrupts printing in progress.

    3. Updates printer driver. Update also affects this unselected print queue.

    4. This printer uses a different preferred driver package. Installing this driver package may affect printing preferences and print queues or cause errors.

  6. Review your settings and choose whether to allow your installation to restart printer spoolers. Choosing Yes may affect current print jobs in your queue. If turned off, changes take effect after your computer restarts.

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  7. Click Install now to install your printers on your computers with your drivers.

Your printer installation begins. You can see your installation status in Printers > Overview > Provisioning Operations. For more information, read Provisioning Operations.