Vista Drivers for Wireless Printer Adapter

Question

I'm a new user.  My boss recently purchased a new Dell All-In-One (AIO) 946 and a Dell Wireless Printer Adapter (WPA) 3300 for his new business location.  I'm his tech guy, who has installed the same equipment at his other 3 business locations.  In all the other locations, we are running Windows XP SP2, and all is working wonderfully.  However, in this new location, Windows Vista has entered into the equation.  There are 3 Laptop PCs involved.  The Dell Inspiron 1300 and the Lenovo/IBM T60 is running Windows XP SP2, and is working as expected.  The 3rd PC is an Acer TravelMate 2480-2779 running Windows Vista 32-bit.  For the past 5 days, I have spent countless hours on your technical support & forums and have had no success.  In fact, I even placed a call to your technical support desk 'twice' and all I got were 2 different persons who could only read from a script, and could not think independently or had any technical knowledge related to the products.  Nevertheless, I am attempting to seek some type of solution for this ongoing problem with a Windows Vista PC that can not identify the WPA 3300 when trying to add a printer.  BTW, the printer works just fine when the 946 is connected via USB directly into the printer.  However, that does not lend itself to be able to share the printer with the other 2 PCs here.  I have downloaded fixes R147095.exe for the WPA3300 and R145315.exe for the AIO946.  The Dell 3300 Set IP Address Utility finds the WPA3300 just fine.  I've even tweaked the drivers to run in WinXP SP2 compatibility mode, which did not resolve the problem.  I do know that the problem resides somewhere within the code that supports the WPA3300, but only the Vista PC is having the problem.  Since this is a business location, I do not have time to 'try this or try that'.  I need a resolution to this problem issue, else I have no other alternative but to send back a very expensive shipment to Dell and go buy a different manufacturer printer and a different wireless print server.  Any technical assistance related to this problem would be graciously appreciated.  Thanks in advance.   Regards,   Felix L. Zents

Stopsie · Answer

For what its worth, I have a new Inspiron 1720 and I purchased the Dell Wireless Adapter 3300 and my machine has Vista 32 bit also.  I have over 10 hours on the phone with tech support and have not been able to successfully connect to my 1720 Printer.  It just did not work, and tech support just could not figure it out and I tried numerous techs.  I am going to have to print wireless by exchanging my 1720 printer for a 1720Dn and hooking up the printer to my wireless router....  not the best solution but i think there is something wrong with the adapter and vista...

hswcb · Answer

I bought the inspiration 1420, the dell 1720 laser printer and the 3300 wireless adapter thinking that if they were all made by the same company it would all work. Well, it didn't. Then after hours and hours a tech got it to work. Then it would stop working every time the computer hibernated and I had to reboot. Now it quit working all together. The tech help I have been offered via email and on the web site just has me go in circles. It is now July 2008 and I see that this problem has gone on since last Fall given what I see in these forum discussions. I re-do everthing and it says it can see everthing but when I try to print -- it will not communicate with the printer.

I want it to work and when it does I do not want to have to re-boot every time I need to print.

PudgyOne · Answer

I use a wireless print adapter 3300 with my 964 and have no problems.

Suggestions are...

Update the firmware in your wireless router

Broadcast SSID

Use WPA-PSK(TKIP) Security. Most wireless devices work best with this type security.

Mixed b and g mode

channels 1, 6 or 11. Most wireless devices work best on these channels.

Save and exit. Power everything off, wait 30 seconds. Turn everything back on.

Attach the USB Cable from the 3300 to your computer and set it up again. Everytime you change things in the wireless router, you also have to change the 3300 to match those settings.

Now for the fun part. Make sure your printer is completely removed from your computer. First make a Restore point. Then download and run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility to completely remove the printer from your computer. Make sure to only click on the printer. Don't fear, that's what you made a System Restore point, in case you click on something wrong.

Restart your computer.

Now setup the printer.

Now go to drivers and downloads/select product/printers/select your printer. Download drivers and firmware.

Install your printer drivers. Choose Network. Follow instructions. If using a print server, choose add, then using print server.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

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