Xerox Phaser 3150 Personal Laser Printer, Installed
This personal laser printer, the Phaser 3150 resembles a thick and heavy plastic tank. Nice printer, though older. Yet we want to keep using it as long as possible. So we hope that these Xerox Phaser 3150 setup instructions long outlive our printer.
It’s substantial, prints crystal clear pages, as one would expect from a laser printer, and operates quietly. We’ve owned one of these now for over ten years. But each time we buy a new computer, we again face setting up this printer on the new hardware and operating systems.
This post thus, is a chronology of our experiences installing the drivers, making the correct USB connections to the computers, printing test pages, and so on, on the 3150. This piece is mostly for our own use, a permanent record of our experiences with the 3150. But we’d be happy if it helps others keep their Xerox laser printers up and running for the printer’s entire life cycle.
This procedure installs 3150 driver software from either CD ROM, or from an unzipped folder. You may download the zipped version from the Xerox support web site.
Connect the power and printer data cables.
Turn on the 3150.
Find the software and documentation CD, packed with the printer. You can also find the latest-published version of this software at the Xerox support website. See below for link.
If installing from disc, put it in your CD / DVD ROM drive.
Run this program and answer YES if prompted for permission to execute this file.
Chose the preferred language at the Xerox Welcome screen. Then, the installation choices screen comes up.
At this screen, you pick what you’d like to install. Choices include the printer driver, remote control panel, and status monitor. They also provide options for viewing the user documentation and browsing the CD.
Choose Printer Driver. This brings up the setup program, specific to this printer’s driver software.
Exit all other Windows programs before proceeding.
Then, hit Next. The License Agreement window pops up.
Read through the agreement. then if you wish to accept it, do so by pressing the Yes button.
Copying of program files to your computer then starts.
We next got an indication that Windows could not find the printer driver. However, this was apparently inaccurate, because subsequently, we did successfully run the printer tests and print demo pages.
When that’s done, press the Finish button in the Setup wizard.
The system next promp to register your 3150. We’ve already registered ours several times over the years. So we press the No button at this window.
Following roughly the same procedures, install Remote Control Panel and Status Monitor programs if you want these components. You do not need these however, if all you’re doing is basic printing on the 3150. They’re nice to have though. Why? Because they allow you to configure monitor, and test your printer’s operation.
At this point, view the user documentation. This includes a setup guide and users manual. These are in PDF format. So the CD also includes an option to install Adobe reader. We don’t do this however, since we already have the latest reader installed.
The Xerox Phaser 3150 is an older laser printer (circa 2004), and the latest drivers we found for it on the website were issued in 2007. We had problems getting Windows 7 64-bit to recognize the 3150 as a printer.
Even though the drivers appeared to install correctly, the printer would show up in the “Unspecified Devices” list as “Xerox Phaser 3150” when turned on. Plus, it never appeared as a properly classified laser printer. That is, it never showed up as an available printer in the Print window of our Microsoft Office applications. So though we could print a test page from the Remote Control Panel software, printing documents from Word, Outlook, Excel, et al, was impossible.
But, we found drivers on Windows Update for the “Zerox 3140 and 3155” that work reasonably well with the 3150.
If you must use the Phaser 3140 and 3155 drivers, know that some documents may print incorrectly. This problem shows up as…
This is a risk when using nearly-but-not-completely-compatible printer drivers. But we want to avoid throwing out a perfectly functioning 3150. Just because we can’t find an EXACT driver for it is no excuse.
This routine installs just the driver software from Windows update. This ensures that you have the latest drivers that Microsoft provides.
Connect the power and printer data cables.
Turn on the Xerox Phaser.
Do that by opening the Windows Control Panel, and locating the Devices and Printers program. The window opens and displays a list of the devices currently attached to the PC and turned on.
The Add a Printer window then appears.
Find this in the Add a Printer window.
Then, the Add Printer window appears.
Since we’re using the USB option with our Phaser, we clicked the Use Existing Port radio button, and then chose “USB001 (Virtual printer port for USB)” in the drop-down list box. Then, we pressed the Next button and got the “Install Printer Driver” window.
Choose Xerox in the Manufacturer list box.
It probably won’t be there. But if it is, pick it and skip to the next step. If it is not, look for the Xerox Phaser 3140 and 3155 driver.
Just below the Printers list box is the Windows Update button. Pressing this downloads a complete list of Xerox printer drivers that Microsoft has on file, that work with Wndows 7. When you press the button, the message displays that Windows is updating list of printers. This might take a few minutes.
Eventually though, the printer manufacturers and printers lists update on your screen.
Look for the Xeros manufacturer and click it.
The driver then installs, and the system then asks if you want to share this printer.
Answer appropriately.
The resulting window displays a test page printing option. Pick this to test correct printing with this non-exact driver for the 3150.
In our case, the page printed well.
The 3140 and 3155 driver has now been installed. So end this driver update session by clicking the Finish button.
Check that the printer you just added appears in the available printers list in these apps. Then try printing to it. If all prints well here, then you’re done.
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