Ricoh Printer Drivers

[Regino Meriweather]

Beloware some of the basic print drivers used for Pharos Secure printing to the Copier Program fleet. If you need a Pharos direct print driver please contact the Copier Program at x9-5273 or copier...@ucsc.edu. We generally advise against direct printing except to IP printers and Pharos-enabled devices that are in the room with you (for security reasons, among other things).

Our shiny new multifunctin device works like a charm. But Ricoh only makes postscript drivers for ... Windows. We have Windows machines here but they spend most of their time updating ... Windows. We'd like to actually get some work done.

This PPD installer is used to install a PPD (Postscript Printer Description) file on Mac OSX. PPD files contain descriptions of printer capabilities such as paper sizes, number of input trays and duplexing. Once the PPD file is installed on the system using the PPD installer, the PS driver that comes bundled with Mac OS X can use the information in the PPD to control the print device and enable full functionality.

Look, folks, I know what Ricoh says. I've spent more time on their website than you can imagine. I've installed the PPD file (which is just the driver file mentioned earlier). If it's working with Apple Postscript it's pretty darn subtle. Print quality stinks. FYI this printer replaced our Ricoh Aficio CL7200D that finally gave out after eight wonderful years. I've been doing this for a while. Please don't assume I'm an idiot. Thanks.

Then you should have explained your problem was print quality from your printer, not asking about a postscript driver. There is no way to know what you've tried or what the problem is unless you state it.

The problem is the postscript printer. Printing with postscript under Windows works fine, highest quality. But there is no apparent way to access postscript on the Mac. Your snark has been noted. FYI I'm running Windows 7 in a vmWare Fusion virtual machine. The software is Adobe Illustrator.

Folks, I want to thank everyone for their suggestions. I asked a similar question on the Adobe board. No luck. I plan to spend some quality time Monday morning on the phone with Ricoh tech support. Good thoughts appreciated. If I get a solution, I'll post it here.

Digital signatures for our printer drivers are done by using the CAT file (the Windows Security Catalog file has the file extension .cat) that is included in the driver package. A CAT file contains a digital signature that is certified by a trusted certificate authority. Another feature of the CAT file is to verify that the entire driver package has not been changed after it has been signed. If any changes have been made to the package's driver files, which are installed on the operating system (OS), the signature will become invalid; or if a change has been made to the CAT file or INF file, then the driver will become uninstallable.

- Microsoft-signed: The driver is digitally signed and certified by Microsoft. This also indicates that the driver has passed the WHQL test program and obtained its status as a WHQL-certified driver. All of our printer drivers, except for PCL Mini-Drivers, that are published via our driver download site, included with the CD/DVD bundled with our machines, or built in to the Windows OS are Microsoft-signed.

- Ricoh-signed: The driver is digitally signed by Ricoh and the signature is certified by VeriSign. This type of driver might also be referred to as an "Authenticode-signed" driver in technical documents (please refer to the Microsoft document linked at the bottom of this section). There might be occasions when we provide a Ricoh-signed driver to specific users for specific purposes. In those cases, the driver satisfies the same conditions as required by the WHQL test program.

- A driver that was digitally signed but some changes have been made to the driver package (files other than the CAT and INF). There might be occasions when we provide this type of unsigned driver to specific users for specific purposes.

Note: If the driver package includes a CAT file but the file does not contain a digital signature, such a driver will also be treated as unsigned by the Windows OS. We do not provide this type of driver.

- When installing a Ricoh-signed driver, the Windows security prompt, "Would you like to install this device software?", will appear. To proceed with the installation, click "Install".

- When installing an unsigned driver, the Windows security alert, "Windows can't verify the publisher of this device software", will appear. To proceed with the installation, click "Install this driver software anyway".

- When installing a driver while logged on as a user without administrator privileges, a User Account Control prompt to log on as an administrator might appear. To install the driver, administrator privileges are required.

Even though the driver is changed to "RICOH PCL6 V4 UniversalDriver V4.16" on the user's computer and the computer is restarted, the driver changes to "microsoft enhanced point and print driver" again.

But primary issue is with driver "microsoft enhanced point and print driver", because when I change driver to "RICOH PCL6 V4 UniversalDriver V4.16" and after restart the PC, the Microsoft dirver appears again

Hi, you can't set the driver on the client system for a connection to a shared printer. What is the HardwareID for the printer on the server? HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/control/print/printers/printername. This HardwareID will need to be the same as the driver installed on the client. I'm guessing you are preinstalling the driver on the client. The hardware Ids are in the printer INF file.

The other way to deliver a Type 4 driver to the client systems rather than the MS point and print compat driver is use a Type 4 driver published to Windows Update. The client will get the driver from WU for shared printers using Type 4 drivers. That's the whole design.

It works only with the Universal Print Class Driver instead of the RICOH PCL6 UniveralDriver V4.27. I thought it did work before with the Ricoh driver but I'm not sure now. When I manually change the driver from Universal Print Class Driver to RICOH PCL6 UniveralDriver V4.27 and try to print a document, I get an error in Windows.

@RickWijn / @kismat I understand your concerns here. However, Universal Print and traditional print drivers work on different technologies. Universal Print prints using PWG's standard IPP protocol eliminating the need for drivers. Printer manufacturers are developing firmwares that work with Universal Print using the IPP protocol.

Universal Print connector is a solution that tries to fill-in the gap until all printers can support Universal Print. It does the translation of driver model to IPP and this translation may vary depending on the quality of driver. I explained this in reply to another post - -print-discussions/universal-print-konica-minolta-li....

I, and I'm sure @RickWijn also, would really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind elaborating on this please? The reason I ask is that from what I can see the last thing that Ricoh put out officially about support for Universal Print was this post in February- Ricoh is adding support for Universal Print to MFP devices. They have been pretty silent since then!

As things stand for me I have been playing around with Windows 11 to try and see if one particular function would be added (PIN printing) but this was negative. I am about to look to getting a few devices firmware updated to see if this will resolve the issue however if there is a possibility that this won't then I don't want to waste time and would rather be looking at other alternatives. I do appreciate your advice of contacting Microsoft Support and will keep this as an option in the back pocket in case all else fails as I would rather be able to get what I see as basic features working properly without the need for custom configurations for our environment.

@kismat - the article you included is for Ricoh adding "direct" support for Universal Print in their printers. They do not mention about their existing drivers and how it works with Universal Print connector.

PIN printing will be available for Universal Print ready printers only - and this too after printer manufacturers have announced support :). Unfortunately, it will not be available for printers behind connector at this point of time.

we have the same issue here in two of our schools but the issue is that we cannot select stapling and other finishing options of the devices we have purchased as despite manufacturers issuing new drivers, they do not get presented to the clients through the Universal print cloud Share.

Anyone know if a Ricoh MP 4055 will work with autocad? Installed the driver for the ricoh printer and whenever Autocad is started will not load until the print spooler is turned off or the print driver uninstalled.

How is the driver configured to print to the hardware? Is it going straight to the printer's IP address or is it going to a print server? Is it getting spooled locally first? If so, you might turn that option off to see if that makes any change.

There is no server in this environment. They have 6 or 7 computers and the print driver is installed on each computer. The driver is installed to an ip address. Autocad was already installed before this printer was installed. They had a xerox printer before this that worked fine they say. They are using REVIT 2018, Architectural Deskptop 2018 and AutoCAD MEP 2018.

I am waiting for some responses from specialists and I thank you for your patience. I looked at the NFO files and didn't see anything unusual. I am a little amazed that this is occurring because I don't think there are any calls to any print drivers during startup. Can you make a Screencast of how this is working/not working? How far into startup does AutoCAD get?

While I am waiting for the team to get back to me on their tests in Windows 7, they have asked if you might prepare a Screencast video that shows this behavior so that they might get a better idea of what is happening.

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