Tumblr 101: Tips And Tricks To Get Started
Sebastian Thrun: Google's Driverless Car
Easily and completely remove the Microsoft XPS doc writer
I do my best to minimize confusion and headaches for my retail customers. One thing that never fails to confuse and annoy is the Microsoft XPS Document Writer.
Most of them have no idea what it is or how it got added to their list of printers. To avoid phone calls from people saying things like "I thought you sold me an HP," I usually just click the icon, press delete, and go about my business.
Admittedly, that's not the most thorough way to get rid of a printer. To do a more complete job, download Rogosoft's Removal Tool. Not only will it delete the printer, but it also removes the driver, XPS library and Essentials Pack, and cleans up any package files that are left behind.
It's 32 and 64 bit compatible, and works on both XP and Vista. It's also fully portable, and free.
Most of them have no idea what it is or how it got added to their list of printers. To avoid phone calls from people saying things like "I thought you sold me an HP," I usually just click the icon, press delete, and go about my business.
Admittedly, that's not the most thorough way to get rid of a printer. To do a more complete job, download Rogosoft's Removal Tool. Not only will it delete the printer, but it also removes the driver, XPS library and Essentials Pack, and cleans up any package files that are left behind.
It's 32 and 64 bit compatible, and works on both XP and Vista. It's also fully portable, and free.
Comments
14
Subscribe to commentsJasonDec 19th 2008 12:02PM
Include this link for the retail customers too dumb to even look up a simple question.
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=what+is+Microsoft+XPS+doc+writer
RocketboyDec 19th 2008 1:22PM
They did look it up. Instead of your too-cool-for-the-room google link, they actually *gasp* called someone who would probably know. I know, it's shocking to rely on other humans for knowledge, but that's what we had to do in the olden days.
JasonDec 19th 2008 1:41PM
Yeah, I guess self-reliance is lame, huh? Better to make it the problem of someone else. I guess you can dramatically gasp at that, too.
RocketboyDec 19th 2008 1:49PM
Yes, the customer relied on themselves to call someone who knew more than them. I'm not trying to create a protracted flame war here, but if you deal with customers directly, you either need to change your attitude quick, or stay in the back office. Whole industries are based on people not being the definition of 'self reliant' that you ascribe to. As a matter of fact, I very well might pay someone else today to make my dinner. And I'm sure this weekend, I'll pay someone(s) to grow sugar cane, process it, ship it to a nearby store, and then sell it to me, so I can put it in my Christmas Egg Nog. Isn't life wonderful?
QuikboyDec 19th 2008 7:04PM
Uh, they might have done so, but still couldn't find a good easy solution? Googling an answer isn't always the answer for everybody.
RocketboyDec 19th 2008 1:24PM
Ok, there's no reason for Mike's comment to be removed, unless it was for the 'saucy' language. So I recovered it and cleaned it.
Mike said 12:56PM on 12-19-2008
Hint: They may be dumb, but if you treat them like they're stupid, you're s*** out of luck trying to drum up business.
Just cause you are *superior* to the 'dumb retail customers' doesn't mean you should insult their intelligence with some website you pulled off of digg to pwn people.
lurk moar, and maybe find some patience while you're at it.
JasonDec 19th 2008 1:44PM
I've never used digg in my life, so whatever. And yes, I'm so impatient I tend to look up things for myself and try to learn something.
And in my experience, people have tended to thank me when I show them how to find the answer themselves, because it saves them time, rather then giving the answer and then going away.
MatiasDec 20th 2008 8:11AM
I always have to delete that "printer" from the system because a lot of my customers thinks that they have a printer installed that´s not phisically connected to the printer port or something like that. Why MS put something so useless in that place? It should be in some place like File menu in word (sorry, word 2007 does not have menus :P). Anyways, thanks for the tip!!
Disk4matDec 19th 2008 4:15PM
The author of this app also sells PDF Writer (a PDF Print driver). Lee... Would it be all that bad to let a customer know what your removing and why?
Lee MathewsDec 19th 2008 4:16PM
No, it wouldn't, and I almost always do. Even if they don't understand fully, it's best to keep customers in the loop.
Peter GoudswaardDec 20th 2008 3:24AM
Didn't work for me on XP, the app finished, jumped me to his web site where it wanted me to buy his pdf writer, but the XPS printer is still there.
Murp|eDec 22nd 2008 9:06AM
For the longest time I had no idea what to do with the XPS printer, but last year I found a good reason for not deleting it which I thought I might share with you all.
It's a workaround for PDF restrictions which can be used as long as the PDF can be printed. Print the PDF to the XPS printer, open the resulting XPS file and then print back to a PDF file using a PDF printer. All of the restrictions of the original PDF document are lost in the conversion, but the text of the original PDF is left intact. I do this regularly when I run into problems trying to extract a few pages of a large PDF document with Adobe Acrobat. It would be nice if someone could automate the process and perhaps even make a batch conversion utility...
BillDec 22nd 2008 10:52AM
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't the XPS writer only found in Vista? I don't remember ever seeing it in XP.
Murp|eJan 5th 2009 6:28AM
I'm not sure if it's part of a standard installation of XP or if it comes along with Microsoft Office or something like that, but it's definetly been on my XP for as long as I can remember. And like I mentioned above, I ended up finally making use of it. Just now I converted a PDF to XPS and then back again to remove some weird update feature in a PDF containing "chinese characters".