Compaq A900 and Win XP

[dakels]

I got a friend of mine a new Dell 4550 with Win XP. He has a Compaq A900 all-in-one printer/fax/scanner. Well it seems stupid Compaq has not and will not write drivers for their A900 to run on windows XP. They recommend using Lexmark drivers to run it on XP. The problem with that is the Lexmark drivers are just for printing and it will not enable the fax or scanning functions. So this all-in-one basically is just a printer now. Pretty stupid.

Does anyone know how to make this sucker work for XP? I hear some companies will write their own drivers for other products but sometimes you have to pay. If it's not an unreasonable price and it is fully functional, they'll pay the money (which I think is a friggin crime that you gotta pay for drivers to work on a standard OS)

 

[ScrapSilicon]

do you have the CD that came with the A900...? if you do you can try forcing(it will give you the line about Warning these not ..yadayada..but plug on thru..) the drivers/software thru..sometimes XP is forgiving and will accept/use them ..sometimes not at all..ymmv...but make sure to set a RestorePoint before the attempt/testing..good luck <edit> on the faxing..think that support has to be added on from the XP(Pro has it not sure on Home at the moment..)

 

[tboneuls]

Are there Windows 2000 drivers that you could try?

 

[dakels]

Thanks for the replies.

Compaq specifically made a statement that the A900 was designed for use on Windows 95/98 and they will not be furthering the support to Win XP. There are only drivers that I can tell for Win 95-98. No 2K, NT, or XP.

How incredibly rediculous is that? Well if I can't get it to work on the XP main system, how about the laptop with ME? ME is basically 98 based right? And whats this about forcing the driver? You mean install the non certified 98 driver? Will XP even see a 98 driver?

Really the only thing missing thats important is the scanning. The printing can be done by using the Lexmark driver (kinda forcng that one too). The faxing can be done standalone. Only thing missing is the scanning but I doubt anything but a proper driver would allow for scanning. That requires an application interface as well. Is there any way to forcing it to recognize via a twain source in Photoshop or something?