I’ve written before about what a huge, horrible, steaming pile of horse shit you have to wade through to install a 32-bit (x86) driver on a 64-bit (x64) server. It’s SO counter-intuitive it makes me want to scrape my eyeballs out with a grapefruit spoon and then chop off my fingers so I won’t be able to see a computer or type ever again.

In a nutshell, you need to have a 32-bit client running Vista or Windows 7, install “the full meal deal” printer driver on that client, THEN connect to the 64-bit server’s printer share (\\server\printer) and then tell it to use the existing driver. That will then UPLOAD the driver from the client machine to the server and make it available to other 32-bit clients who try to connect to it.

Today I’m in the opposite situation. I PURPOSELY set up a 32-bit Windows Server 2008 (not R2, which is 64-bit only) to run my print queues because 99.9% of my network is 32-bit Windows XP clients and I didn’t want to have to go through this rigmarole for every single one of them. *MY* laptop, however is running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and it’s unable to connect to the shared printers on the 32-bit server.

Rather than duplicate the steps above, since I was feeling saucy and experimental, I went the other(old) way around. On the 32-bit server, I opened the printer properties, went to the sharing tab and clicked on Additional Drivers. I checked the 64-bit box and it asked me for a driver. I clicked Browse. I navigated to the folder where I had the 64-bit driver .inf file for the printer, selected it and clicked OK.

Fast-forward a few seconds and the window closed, and the box was checked. Just like that. Just how it USED to be in older versions of Windows Server. I went back to my laptop, tried to connect to the printer, and this time instead of failing and saying “Driver Unknown” or even worse, the  0x0004005 error which is one of the more generic error codes you’ll ever see. (I always thought it was “Access Denied”, but that’s just ONE of the errors it COULD be.) Up came a NEW dialog box. Do you trust this printer driver? Yes, of course I do. Just like that, it mapped the printer, using the 64-bit driver on the 32-bit server.

If it’s so bloody easy to do that with a 64-bit driver on a 32-bit server, why the HELL is it SO difficult and bass-ackwards to do it on a 32-bit driver with a 64-bit server??