I had an Apollo printer until about 6 months ago. I now have a Lexmark, but everytime I start the computer, I get this "New Hardware found" message and it's seeing, or looking for the old printer. So I hit cancel. Well, then the window comes up again! I have to hit cancel about 10 times before it finally says, there's a problem or some such thing. Is there someting in my sys ini. or something that it's still seeing? I'd love some help (in lay terms) to get this problem removed.

there should be a chackbox, try going next, and going to the end of the wizard, i'm sure there is a box marked something like "don't ask me again", or something like that.

Yeah, there is, but it won't listen. I know removing printer drivers can be a pain. There must be a bit of it left somewhere, which XP is seeing. Any other ideas?

ok, right click on the my computer icon>properties>hardware>device manager and look under there for your printer, when you find the one you no longer use, right click and disable it it will probably be under imaging devices if you have an all in one

If you have Registry Mechanic by elements5 you can remove anything you want from your start up with a singe click. I think it's free for evaluation. BTW you can clean a bunch of other sections for your computer like stuffin your delete program section that get stuck there. I've used it for a couple of month now and it seems safe.

No, I went in there and uninstalled the LPT port, no difference. I told it not to alert me again, no difference. Anger is setting in!

Hmmm... curious. My first inclination is to disconnect all printers, go into the Printers window, and remove all the printers. Then remove them from Device Manager, if you can see them there. Reboot a couple of times. Without the printer connected, hopefully the message goes away.

If it does, reconnect it and follow the install instructions. If it doesn't, check for any special print driver software. Remove that. Check as well for anything in startup, too.

And failing that, do a registry crawl for the printer. Remove all keys...

Play safe with the last one. Backup and all that... it really is important [img]smile.gif[/img]

I think it's more of a registry issue. My current printer is USB, so I can't see that being a problem. I'll try it anyway though. How do I access the registry?

Through regedit. That's Start, Run, Regedit.

**WORD OF CAUTION**

Improper mucking around in the registry can turn your computer into a boat anchor (at least, until you reinstall the OS from scratch). Make sure you've got comfortable backups of everything before you get started.

**END WORD**

I have to add that in, because if you're asking how to get into it, you've probably never had that warning before [img]smile.gif[/img] Since you're on XP, I'd set a restore point just before doing any registry manipulation.

Once you're in there, do an F3 search for strings that appear to be related to the old printer. That would include things like Apollo and the printer model. When you find something, delete it. F3 to find the next one.

Don't go too fast. You've really got to read the entries it comes up with. I say this because it can get really, really boring... :(

I would go through the steps I outlined above before doing a registry crawl. The important thing is the reboot between, to ensure that any traces from the last time are completely gone. If you don't, they may still be in memory. And the fact that your current printer is USB doesn't matter much; it still has to get recognized.

Tanks fo de voning. And believe I found that out the hard way. I did have to re-install XP. But, I'll look and see if I can find anything.