Windows Vista and Epson EPL-5900L

I have been recently approached to help get the above laser printer to work with Windows Vista. Checking Epson’s web site for a Vista driver all I could find was a comment stating that this printer wasn’t supported on Vista. So, I thought why not try to install the latest XP driver on Vista. However, this didn’t work. While the driver seemed to have installed correctly when I tried to print anything all I got were weird error messages (“ebapi not found …”). Mhm, a different approach was needed and here’s how I finally succeeded (I can’t guarantee that this will work for anyone else):

  1. If you have installed the XP driver on Vista – remove it!
  2. Go to http://esupport.epson-europe.com/ and select, “Laser Printers”, “EPL-5900L” and “Windows XP”
  3. Go to “Drivers & Software” (here’s a link to that site: http://tinyurl.com/5td3ko) and download “Silent Driver (3.3.2fl)” (which is a .zip file)
  4. Extract the zip file to wherever you like on your hard drive
  5. In Vista, go to the Control Panel->Printers, select “Add a printer”.
  6. Then select “Local Printer”, choose “USB” as your local printer port and when asked to select the printer make and model select “Have Disk”
  7. Browse to the directory where you extracted the driver in step 4 and select the EPT0252E.INF file
  8. If Windows then tells you that it already found a driver for this printer go for the Overwrite option
  9. Voilà! All that’s left to do is to print the test page to make sure the printer is working correctly

Update: This procedure appears not to work for the 64bit version of Windows Vista.  I’m also getting reports that this procedure works for Windows 7 too. I have no access to Windows 7 and therefore can’t verify that. You have been warned.

14 Comments

  2. This suggested solution does not work on Vista -64. Maybe those who reported positive results has Vista 32-bit mode. I tried the above-mentioned solution under 64-bit Vista and got negative results.

  3. This is true – this was done on the 32bit version of Vista. It is quite likely that it will fail on the 64bit version. Thanks for letting me know.

  4. Hi! Any ideas how to get this 5900l working on windows 7 32-bit? these instructions don’t work :/ (they did on vista, so thanks for that!)

  6. In Win7.Ultimate.x86 ver 7600.16385.090713-1255, go to the Control Panel->View devices and printers, right click on “Epson EPL-5900L Advanced”, select printer properties, click “OK”, select advanced, set “print direcfly to the printer”.

    It worked!

  8. Yes, it works on Windows 7 x86!
    Thank you for solution of this last issue with transition to W7. Epson’s support sucks as usual.

  9. Yes, it works; thanks. But it doesn’t work perfectly. The printer is able to print only if amount of data is less than 2 MB (printer’s own memory), typically it means about 4-5 pages. If the amount of data to print is larger, the printer is not printing (or 1 page or half a page…). (Vista, SP2)

  11. Unbelievable! This just worked for me on a (German) 32 Bit Windows 7 Home Premium. Thanks a lot!

  12. Many thanks!! It worked for Windows 7 32 bit. I had to disconnect the printer (it seemed that it wouldn’t work), but when I then reconnedted it, and the test page was printed fine!!

  14. Hi, it works on Windows 7 32 bit. I just have found this solution, after whole day of fighting with this stupid “new” system.

    Thanks a lot. but probably Win7 32 bit is the last system where you can use this device.

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