Computer won't boot and some installers won't run without printer powered on

I have an Epson CX4800 printer which, even without Vista native drivers, works perfectly under Vista... except for one issue.



If my printer is not turned on, Vista will not cold boot (returns from hibernate fine, but won't boot fresh). If I turn on my printer before Vista starts to load, though, I'm home free.



As well, certain installation programs will simply hang unless and until my printer is turned on. I just upgraded my Catalyst drivers yesterday, and while it was detecting my hardware it just sat at halfway across the meter for 20 minutes. I turned on my printer, and within seconds it was finishing the installation.



Has anyone had any similar experiences and have any ideas?

 

Did your PC boot ok before you installed your printer? Try uninstalling it. this is a weird one!

 

Yes, I had no trouble booting without it installed, although I booted only a few times that way before getting to the printer in my list of things to install. I will try uninstalling it, but that won't work as a long-term solution, but may help troubleshoot.

 

Keep us updated

 

Go to the Epson Australia site. They have Vista drivers for the Epson CX4700, which also includes the 4800 in driver filename -- so it may also support the 4800.



Download and install the Vista driver. That's likely to solve your printer problems.



I did the same for my Epson R220 and it works great now. And no, Epson is not posting the drivers to their US site.

 

let me guess! your printer is on usb? right? well the problem there is a small setting with in bios press delete or F2 to get into the bios on boot up and depending on the bios type, look for the boot settings and enable usb boot so that usb plug and play will work join the boot up that should clear any problems with I/O on bootups if its not a usb printer then i would be v surised.