I'm having no luck at all printing DVDs with my Epson R200 in Vista. Where to begin...

Epson Print CD v1.20E is the version that I've had that was working fine in XP. It came on the CD that came with the printer. A program in Vista called Windows Defender kept deleting it. Under the fine print of Vista it says that Defender is allowed without user knowledge, to delete any suspicious software. Obviously it deems it suspicious. On the rare occasion that it wasn't deleted, I ran it and it said that there was no printer driver. The inbuilt Epson R200 driver in Vista obviously isn't compatible with it. It prints fine with normal paper.

I talked to Epson about this, they said that Version 1.3 upwards were compatible with Vista. They said that due to licencing issues that they couldn't supply this to me over the internet and they needed to see a proof of purchase and then I could buy the latest version on cd off them for £10 ($20ish). I politely said no thanks. That's all the information they had to help me. They then asked if I wanted to buy any of their 'competitively priced' ink. Yeah right.

Epson Print CD v1.40E is the next version I googled. It also would not work with the Vista printer driver. I installed the Xp driver and Vista kept protesting but in the end I managed to install it. The Print CD program then had its driver, and would let me print. The only thing is, even though the printer was described as ready, when it went to print, the print job would just hang on the screen, and the printer would make faintest of noises as if it was starting to do something, and then nothing happened. Still couldn't get it to print.
Then Defender deleted it. Scary program.

Epson Print CD v1.50 was the version I got off Epson Russia. This decided it wanted to print, the printer sprung into action, and so did my heart. Only thing is, the printer wouldn't accept the cd tray, it just wanted to push it out. It did this until it was totally out, then both the ink and paper lights went crazy. So I closed the tray loader flap, and it wanted paper. So obviously it's not taking the print command as being for the cd tray.

Photoshop template does the same thing, rejects the tray then tries to print with paper.

As yet, I still can't print. I tried to make a dual boot for XP just for printing cds and dvds as it's really important but I failed and that's not a matter for this topic ^_^

Has anyone actually managed to print a cd or dvd in Vista, and how did you manage to do it? It's driving me crazy considering that I may have to stop using an otherwise fine new OS because of one (important) thing I can't do.

Today Epson offered up

In Print CD, when printing, go into Manual Print mode, select the paper size as A4 and the paper source as Manual.

To that, my printer just sits there and does nothing. I hope it works for other people.
Epson then said there was no solution they had then, and that maybe in the future a fix would be placed on the site. Then they asked me if I wanted to buy any ink and that was it again.

Complain to MS & the computer mfr. that Vista SUCKS @$$. When they tell you "Too bad", wipe the HDD & buy an older OS to install.

I had same problem with my R300 printer running Print CD Version 1.22E. I solved the problem completely by configuring the shortcut to run under XP Pro SP2 compatibility. Hope this helps.

I've been struggling for a while to get Vista to do what XP did without thinking but have just succeeded in transferring over to my new vista-equipped laptop the Epson Print CD (vers 1.5). This required pasting the old Epson print CD folder into the new laptop's Programs directory AND copying the accompanying .dll file into the Windows system32 folder too. Don't know whether this would work for versions older than 1.50 though.... Any good?

Can you upload that .dll file so that to try it?

Hi Steve,
Don't suppose you have a link to the 1.5 version do you ???
I have tried just about everything so far to get the damn thing to work.
Which .dll files do i need to paste into system32 folder as well please.

Hope you can help before I re-install my copy of XP....!

Jester27

I DON'T BELIEVE IT !!!

I have just for the sheer hell of it tried the old XP driver off the Epson website for my R200 instead of the microsoft Vista one.
And Guess what............... It only works...!

So for info I am using Print CD ver 1.40E and Driver ver 6.6 i think it was. (its the latest one anyway)

Am I the happy bunny....

Best of luck chaps this might just be the info you are all looking for.

Jester27

It works with my R300!

When I used the XP Printer driver in Vista back before my first post, it didn't work. Well, it would print everywhere else but it still would not print cds. So, for general printer use it acted the same as the standard Vista driver. What is the trick to getting it to work? All it ever seemed to do was confuse programs and cause conflicts.

Chipsw, i'll try the Windows XP compatibility mode, I didn't know there was one! Thanks!

Thats good....
just a thought, now i've slept on it.

I did copy all the DLL files from epson print cd folder into the system32 folder of vista (not sure if that made any difference) and I am not runnig print CD in XP compatability mode.

all the best guys.
Jester27

Hi - from my experience with Vista RC2 you need both the native Vista (indicated with (M) - for Microsoft I assume) and Epson XP driver (set it to XP compatibility mode before running the installer) installed side by side. Ink levels can only be checked under Vista printer properties, but Print CD (also best to install/run in compatibility mode I would say) requires the Epson driver. This was with an R200. Pretty amazing that Epson doesn't have proper Vista drivers.

This worked for me a couple if times: see attached (tried to keep it small)
These are the settings i use..


http://rezoo.me.uk/photocd-fix-maybe.jpg

Hey chipsw;
I tried changing the compatability in the shortcut as suggeted. Still same problem...the CD goes through its regular routine (I know every click and whir, as I have printed 100's of CD's in XP on my R300), and smoothly moves the CD about 3/4 the way in, and starts printing. Fortunately I learned to be quick on the 'stop' button on the printer.

Maybe I'll try dowloading the XP driver. Nothing else to do :-)

EUREKA!
By combining the action of changing the compatability thing to Window XP in the Shortcut properties; AND changing the printer settings to 'Manual', 'CD' AND (this is important) TRAY 2...
the dang thing works now. Like it never happened.

In the phraseology of my old profession, Vista blows goats. I'd been having all sorts of problems printing CDs but found by a process of elimination that by manually resetting the Printer Settings and then using the downloaded XP drivers from the Epson site (using XP SP2 compatibility mode) things went back to the way they were in the good old days of my old computer and Win XP.

The annoying thing is that a dialog box came up stating that the compatibility problem was Epson’s fault. Vista has thrown up all sorts of problems including that I can no longer use Epson's very user-friendly Smart Panel.

In fact, Vista refused to recognise my scanner until again by experimentation I downloaded VueScan which seems to solve all the scanning compatibility issues but which has cost quite a lot to get me into a less satisfactory state when scanning than using my old system.

At the moment I've got the trusty old computer running side by side with the new one just to do the jobs that Vista is preventing me from doing due to compatibility issues. If I knew when I bought into Vista that it would throw apps that I used daily into this level of disarray, I would have just gone for a new system and stuck with XP.

Thank you ridgenvale!
I'm using an R300 with version 1.2 of print CD
I got it to work by allowing vista to install its driver then installing the print cd program for the epson disk. Set the print properties to manual paper paper tray, CD paper size, and tray 2 on print dialog..
IT WORKED GREAT..


THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD ITS ALL GOOD INFO

Ok the manual settings work, but how can this be fixed so I don't have to change this every time I start Print CD?

Nice work guys

# re: Vista and Printer Drivers
EPSON R200 VISTA WOOOOOO's...

I hope this helps somebody 'cause for me I nearly went back to XP (I'm nearly bold now) I was sick and tired of not getting my printer to print on the CD's/DVD's. So here is what I finally got to work....add a new printer in the control panel under printers. Use the same setup the "M" gives you for the epson r2o0..basically all you doing is a copy of the printer that's already installed, name it what you like; I called it CD/DVD Pain. Then go into the setting for your new printer and set it up for CD/DVD printing only. Use the following settings: MANUAL - CD/DVD - BEST PHOTO - A4. Now when you use the Epson Print CD software choose the new printer and tray 2. It works for me.

Great Idea