Before you reinstall the latest Lexmark printer program or driver into your computer, make sure you have totally uninstalled and cleaned up the registry Lexmark. If not, you will have problems either in installation or getting the printer to work properly.
These are the three steps which I have done, before I reinstall Lexmark program.
A) Uninstall Lexmark Program
B) Delete Lexmark Printer Driver
C) Clean Up Registry
Step A. Uninstall Lexmark program via Control Panel
This is the usual way of uninstalling programs from your hard drive.
1. Go to Start. Click "Control Panel".
2. Under "Programs", click "Uninstall a program".
3. Right click on Lexmark. Then click "Uninstall/change".
Step B. How To Delete Lexmark Printer Driver
Before you do anything, disconnect printer USB cable from your computer.
1. Click Start. Select "Control Panel".
2. Click "System and Security".
3. Click on Device Manager which can be found under "System".
4. Expand "Imaging Devices" by clicking on the small triangle icon beside it.
5. Double click on your printer name.
6. A box pops up. Select "Driver" tab.
7. Now click "Uninstall".
Step C: Clean Up Driver From The Registry
Note: Before you do anything to the Registry, please first backup the Registry .
This is how to backup registry file and restore Registry file in Window 7.
How To Clean Up the Lexmark driver in the Registry
1. Click "Run", type regedit in the box and click "OK".
2. After clicking on it, probably you will see a User Account Control dialog box which says:"Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer". Click "Yes".
3. First click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Then click on the small triangle symbol next to it to expand.
Note: When I say "expand", I mean click on the small triangle symbol which is next to the word SYSTEM, CurrentConrolSet, Print, etc)
4. Next expand SYSTEM.
5. Then expand CurrentControlSet.
6. Expand Control
7. Scroll down and look for "Print" and again expand.
8. Then expand "Printers".
9. Now if there is any Lexmark printer folder still left over, you can see it listed below "Printers".
10. If it is still there, then right click on it.
11. Now select "Delete" and click on it to remove it.
Note: This is the sequence of the folders as mentioned above:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers
After you have done the above action, now let's check further for any Lexmark trace in your registry.
The method is similar as above.
Now the sequence is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3
If there is nothing there, then close the Registry Editor.