How to Install Brother Printers Without a CD Rom
By B. Steele
If you've lost your Brother printer installation disc or if you acquired a used Brother printer for your office and it didn’t come with the installation disc, you will still be able to install the printer. Printer manufacturers like Brother expect people to misplace or disregard the CDs that ship with their printers, and they provide all drivers and installation software available to customers on their websites. Windows 7 also ships with a large library of drivers, so you might not need the CD or Brother’s driver download at all.
Connect your Brother printer to the computer.
Power on the printer and wait while it goes through its routine initialization procedure.
Power on the computer.
Log in to the computer using an administrator account. Windows will attempt to locate an appropriate driver and install the printer for you. If it succeeds, you’ll see a message in the system tray at the lower-right corner of your desktop stating that the installation was successful. If this doesn’t happen, you will need to install the drivers manually.
Visit Brother’s downloads page (see Resources) and download the appropriate driver for your printer model. Follow the instructions on the download page to install the driver. If the installation package just extracts the driver files to a folder and doesn’t install the printer, you will have to install the driver after it is downloaded.
Click the Windows "Start" button and select “Devices and Printers.”
Click the “Add a printer” button at the top of the screen.
Select “Add a local printer.”
Click the “Use an existing port” button on the Choose a Printer Port page. Choose the USB port if your printer is a USB model, or select “LPT1” or “LPT2” if the printer connects via a parallel port -- unlikely unless the printer is quite old.
Click “Next” and click the “Have Disk” button.
Browse to the folder where you extracted the driver files and click “OK.”
Follow the on-screen instructions and click “Finish” to exit the wizard.
Warnings
When downloading a driver for any device, only use the manufacturer’s website. Drivers operate at the fundamental level of your operating system and installing unsupported drivers may infect your computer will malware or at best and render your system unbootable at worst.
Make sure you download the correct driver for your printer model. If you install an incorrect driver, the printer may function erratically or not work.
References
Resources
Writer Bio
A writer and proofreader since 2006, B. Steele also works as an IT Help Desk analyst, specializing in consumer and business user tech support. She earned a B.A. in English and journalism from Roger Williams University. Steele also holds certifications as a Microsoft-certified desktop support technician, Microsoft-certified IT professional, Windows 7 enterprise support technician and CompTIA A+ IT technician.