I've had a Brother HL-L2380DW since my Windows 7 days. It has a USB-
A connector and also wireless.

When I got my Win does 10 machine, I assumed my old Brother install
disc wouldn't work, and I just let Windows supply a driver, but it's
really not satisfactory. (Characters don't print crisply, and custom
margins in Excel and Word don't come out right.)

Fortunately, Brother has a driver on line, for Windows 10 and 11. I'm
planning to

1. Uninstall the printer in the Windows dialog.

2. Run the Brother driver installer and follow its instructions.

Is that the right idea, or can I run the Brother driver installer and
have my existing printer in Windows updated automatically?

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

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On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:31:19 -0800, Stan Brown
<the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I've had a Brother HL-L2380DW since my Windows 7 days. It has a USB-
A connector and also wireless.

When I got my Win does 10 machine, I assumed my old Brother install
disc wouldn't work, and I just let Windows supply a driver, but it's
really not satisfactory. (Characters don't print crisply, and custom
margins in Excel and Word don't come out right.)

Fortunately, Brother has a driver on line, for Windows 10 and 11. I'm >planning to

1. Uninstall the printer in the Windows dialog.

2. Run the Brother driver installer and follow its instructions.

Is that the right idea, or can I run the Brother driver installer and
have my existing printer in Windows updated automatically?

Remove your existing driver first.
Go to the Brother site and get the driver. With my Brother Lazar
printer, it wants the driver installed WITHOUT the printer connected.
The Brother printer does not have a Win 11 driver so I left it
connected to a Win 10 machine. Their drivers usually come with install directions.


KenW

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On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 14:49:09 -0700, KenW wrote:

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:31:19 -0800, Stan Brown
<the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I've had a Brother HL-L2380DW since my Windows 7 days. It has a USB-
A connector and also wireless.

When I got my Win does 10 machine, I assumed my old Brother install
disc wouldn't work, and I just let Windows supply a driver, but it's
really not satisfactory. (Characters don't print crisply, and custom >margins in Excel and Word don't come out right.)

Fortunately, Brother has a driver on line, for Windows 10 and 11. I'm >planning to

1. Uninstall the printer in the Windows dialog.

2. Run the Brother driver installer and follow its instructions.

Is that the right idea, or can I run the Brother driver installer and
have my existing printer in Windows updated automatically?

Remove your existing driver first.
Go to the Brother site and get the driver. With my Brother Lazar
printer, it wants the driver installed WITHOUT the printer connected.
The Brother printer does not have a Win 11 driver so I left it
connected to a Win 10 machine. Their drivers usually come with install directions.

Thanks, Ken. I had already downloaded the driver, but I didn't see
any instructions about covering the case of someone who had already
started using a Windows-supplied driver. Hence my question about
whether I should uninstall the printer first, which you answered.

BTW, for my model the Windows 10 and 11 drivers seem to be identical.
Either download path gets a file called
HL-L2380DW-win10_11-inst-C2-US.EXE.

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

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Thanks, Ken. I had already downloaded the driver, but I didn't see
any instructions about covering the case of someone who had already
started using a Windows-supplied driver. Hence my question about
whether I should uninstall the printer first, which you answered.

BTW, for my model the Windows 10 and 11 drivers seem to be identical.
Either download path gets a file called
HL-L2380DW-win10_11-inst-C2-US.EXE.

My Win 10 puter is only used to print stuff "Income Tax"! or
instructions for something. It will run Win11, just too lazy (old) to
try the print driver and don't want to buy a new printer.


KenW

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The first thing I'd do is uninstall the current driver. It's possible that it will simply automatically reinstall. If so, don't worry about it. Just run the manufacturer's installer and then set the 2nd install as default.

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For those who may be interested in the outcome:

As suggested, I deleted the printer from Devices and Printers, then
installed the Brother suite. It led me through setup Windows, and
that all went smoothly. I tried a test print, and Printer Properties
now brings up the Brother dialog rather than the Windows XP?style
dialog I was getting from the Windows driver before.

Sadly, print quality was only a little better than it had been before
-- acceptable, but not nice and crisp looking. (I used the default
600 dpi setting.) I changed drum and toner recently, so I don't think
this is a hardware problem.

More disappointing, the margin problems are just as bad as they were
with the Windows driver. Specifically:

* MS-Word: I print recipes from Word in a 5"×7" box, and a line on
the back that is anchored to a fixed distance above the bottom margin
actually appears just below the bottom margin.

* MS-Excel: I print slip sheets for tall thin DVD cases, and the disc
title doesn't align correctly to the spine.

I'm pretty sure this is a Windows 10 problem, because my Windows 8
machine, with the same version of MS-Office, prints both of these as
desired. I don't have the energy to try a lot of tweaking, just for
these cases. If somebody knows, "oh yes, it's definitely _____" then
great, but otherwise I'll just pull out the Windows 8 laptop for
those specific jobs, which don't happen terribly often.

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:31:19 -0800, Stan Brown wrote:

I've had a Brother HL-L2380DW since my Windows 7 days. It has a USB-
A connector and also wireless.

When I got my Win does 10 machine, I assumed my old Brother install
disc wouldn't work, and I just let Windows supply a driver, but it's
really not satisfactory. (Characters don't print crisply, and custom
margins in Excel and Word don't come out right.)

Fortunately, Brother has a driver on line, for Windows 10 and 11. I'm planning to

1. Uninstall the printer in the Windows dialog.

2. Run the Brother driver installer and follow its instructions.

Is that the right idea, or can I run the Brother driver installer and
have my existing printer in Windows updated automatically?

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)