8.1 Found Workgroup printer. I'm not on WG! New Printer?

feedgatorbill4

New Member
Messages
8
Hello,

I have an Epson color 580 printer from like 15 years ago. Worked great with XP. When I tried to print with W8.1, it directed me to save the file as an .xps or something. I couldn't get the .xps to print. I did some reasearch and people said to disable the windows .xps viewer or whatever it's called in controll panel and make my printer the primary printing device. I disabled and removed the default .xps viewer and the fax under the printers section which automatically moved my printer ('USB Printer') up from 'secondary' to 'primary' but it still wouldn't print. Then I realized I didn't install the printer driver. I put the driver CD in but nothing at all happened. I went to Epson's site and downloaded the XP driver because it was the latest version. It gave an error after installing but I restarted and tried to print anyway. When I tried to print, it said 'no printers were set up' and asked to 'install one?' so I hit yes, but it found the printer on someone else's computer in another room of this house and I thought I wasn't on any sort of network/workgroup sharing and I don't want to be. I had 'find printer and devices on network..." set to OFF in settings. I have eveything that I can see in settings set to not be on the Workgroup/Network sharing. I tried "The printer that I want isn't here" but that didn't work. With XP, when I used to format, it would show me the name(s) of the workgroups during the format, and I would never join what was default named WORKGROUP. When formatting W8.1, it didn't show anything about workgroups while I installed it.

The last thing I want is to possibly have my data shared on the network. I've had 8.1 installed for a few days now but I haven't taken anything from my external drive that I saved from my XP machine in case it can be read from other computers in this house or via Wi-Fi. I really need that data but have been waiting because of this.

So, besides letting me know how I can make sure I'm 0% on the workgroup network if that's even possible, do I need to buy a newer printer to use with windows 8.1 or can I make the Epson color 580 work?
Thanks a lot.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    w8
Without a Windows 8 driver for the printer you may be at a disadvantage, especially if you are running the x64 version of Windows 8.

About all you can do is to see if Windows 8 already has a driver for that printer. If it does, it might be a generic form and may not allow full functionally.

There is a possibility you could install and run the XP drivers in compatibility mode, but I would not want to take a chance of diminishing my Windows 8 install and causing other problems.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
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