Dell 968W printer

Hi, I just got my 968 printer working the other day after over a year and a half of dealing with this problem.

The fix is quite simple.  So simple it's mind boggling.

OK, first of all, the problem seems to lie with the way Vista installs the drivers from the driver file that comes with the CD and any newer downloadable drivers.  It'll load the XPS driver, but not the main printer driver.  However, both are installed on your HDD, so it's there, just not activiated as such.

So what you do is to go to Control Panel.  Then under the Hardware and Sound category, select Printer.  You should then see the Dell 968w AIO Printer XPS driver, along with the Fax Dell 968w AIO Printer and a few others.  What you need to have is the regular Dell 968w AIO Printer driver.  If it's not there, don't worry.  It's on your HDD.  It just wasn't set up when you installed the software.  OK, now then, select Add Printer.  Select the Add Local Printer and click Next.  Then this next step is important.  The port selection is defaulted at LPT1.  This is wrong, you want to select the USB001 port.  Click Next.  The scroll down the list of manufactures and select Dell.  Two drivers should pop up in the box on the right.  The regular Dell 968w AIO Printer and the Dell 968w AIO Printer XPS.  Select the first one, the non-XPS one.  This is the main printer driver.  The XPS driver is just a paper enhancement driver.  Whatever that means.   When you select the non-XPS driver and then click Next, the computer will then show you a quick progrss install bar as it sets up the correct printer driver.  Shouldn't take but a couple seconds.  After that's done, just make sure that you select the "Make this my default printer" or something to the effect.  And that's pretty much it.

What you will then see is that everytime you go to print or scan is a progress bar in the bottom right of your screen.  You didn't get this while trying to use the old XPS driver, right? 

Lincoln6Echo,

Thank you for sharing this information. If you could do me a favor and post this solution in the...

968 & 968w All-In-One Printer owners thread (W7)

That way people can see this information quicker and it will also help them.

Thanks,

Rick

Wish i'd run into this about 6 hours ago.  took five minutes to fix my problem.

thanks for the help.

Took me about a year and half to deduct this solution from several other Internet postings about this very issue.  I read one answer somewhere and it really didn't make sense at first.  But after comparing it to a couple others, I finally figured out to try the procedure I outlined above.

Ranger522,

Glad you got it working :emotion-21: Thanks for posting back.

Take care,

Rick

I am having similar problems. My printer has worked off and on for about the last 2 years but never wireless. I finally got the wireless working but it is not reliable.

I go thru the set up process and it will print a test page just fine but then for some reason it refuses to communicate with my laptop. I have updated the firmware as well as the drivers several times and i have tried all of the solutions listed regarding the ports to use and what drivers to select and still nothing. I am beginning to think that Dell is just not cut out to make printers (even though this is made by lexmark)

Are there any other solutions to be had for this printer? I am using Vista which is a whole different ball of wax in itself. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: pipline filter host stopped working and was closed

The above worked for me after trying many other solutions.

Problem solved: error message pipline filter host stopped working and was closed

"pipline filter host stopped working and was closed"

Help google come up with this solution on first place. Please copy the error message that people are likely to serch for in the post even if it is just a thank you note.

OsloBrain,

I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have added the solution to the 968 & 968w All-In-One Printer owners thread (W7) Hopefully in the near future, Google will find the edited information and find the threads quickly.

Pipeline or pipline?

I made it pipeline, I hope this was correct.

Rick