Oh, Brother...

[beaky]

I love how these things happen- haven't used my old Lexmark All-in-One in ages, and as soon as I wanted to print out some important stuff for my trip tomorrow, it seemed to die. thought about troubleshooting it, then decided "the hell with it; it's over 5 years old; I'm getting a new one".

A quick search found me a networkable Brother unit, on sale, all the bells 'n' whistles... but damned if I can install the software.

Tried for a while last night and gave up, and now I'm about to give up again.

What happens is the Windows wizard, as usual, keeps telling me "Ooh! I found new hardware! Stand by for a message about how I can't install it, OK?"
Meanwhile, the installer app on the disc is grinding away, happy as a clam, apparently. Familiar, right?
Except for the status window...

Normally, one closes the stupid Windows messages, but I've noticed that whether I close them or not, every time I look back at the progress meter on the installer, it's gone back, say from +60% to 20%, without any indication that it is now loading a different component or whatever. It never arrives at 100%. There's no clear pattern to it. I let it go for about 2 hours (!!) yesterday, let windows keep telling me it couldn't do it, and it never finished. The meter would still be going, I'd walk away, come back... and it was rolled back. I've had to re-install drivers, etc. before, but never seen anything like this.

I will eventually call their tech support (golly, I can't wait; that will be fun ), but I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts.
The error message is that the RPC server is unavailable, which is a new one on me; never seen that. Usually, XP just says "Duh, now that the installer is done and you are happily using your hardware, I must tell you that... duh... I could not install it for you..." But this time, it mentions the RPC server every time. And it appears top be interfering with the installer.

I've tried to restart, scanned for malware, stopped/started the RPC service, yadda yadda... haven't tried disabling the "Plug and Play" wizard yet; maybe I'll try that (although of course Windows advises against that).

FWIW, the RPC service is enabled,the Lexmark drivers were removed first, etc., etc. Also, for now, I've been trying to set it up on the USB buss, so it's not a network issue (but I also got a switch, finally, and it worked fine out of the box).

[eno]

May sound stupid ........ Have you tried a restart before installing the drivers?

[Politically Incorrect]

With some hardware and peripherals you must install the software before hooking up the device, if you hook up the device before installing the software complications can occur your manual should tell you the order in which to install.

Something you could try instead of installing all the bloat that usually accompanies printers is to insert the CD and stop it from auto running. Hook up the printer and when Windows finds it point it to the CD for the drivers only this should get you up and running without all the added stuff printer software wants to install on your computer.

[beaky]

Thanks guys, but I've covered all that...  :(