Dimension E520 and 946 not working together?

Question

My friend bought a Dell PC and asked me to give him a hand setting it up. Everything was going fine until we got to the printer. Its a Dell 946. I installed the drivers and software as per instructions and printed a test and everything was fine until I went to reboot the PC. It gets stuck halfway through the BIOS loading screen and just freezes. So I plugged out the printer and the PC booted fine. I went into the BIOS options and selected the option "USB no boot". It booted fine the first time after that but now the printer is not being recognised. Keep getting a communication error when I go into the printer configuration utility. So I re-installed the printer drivers and now it is freezing on boot up and its not being picked up when I plug it in?

Any suggestions to get this nightmare of a printer to work?

william_the_sco · Answer

This may be the cause. You should start loading the printer driver with the printer usb plug unplugged. and plug it in part way through the driver installation, when called for.

Youcancallmeal · Answer

Thanks for the reply william_the_scot but it turned out to be something different in the end. After a week of troubleshooting I finally got it working. Firstly to get the PC to boot with the printer plugged in I had to go into the BIOS and select "No Boot" under the USB options. Then I still had the problem of the printer not being detected when plugged in. Luckily I stumbled upon this thread:
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=A940&thread.id=16670&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Turns out Dell have been supplying 10ft usb cables with printers which are either just faulty or are too long? I replaced the 10ft cable with a much shorter one and now its finally working. I don't think I'll ever advise someone who isn't computer savvy to buy a Dell again, its just far to much hassle

samh65 · Answer

Wow this is the eact same problem I was having except.... after selecting USB no boot under the bios settings it still frooze up. I ended up with another brand new E520. Works great. You had more patience with Dell tech support than i did..

Printers

Dimension E520 and 946 not working together?

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