If you use a Epson Stylus Color 880 printer, you may not be able to use it on your Windows 10 computer.
Typical symptoms of this issue are that it will appear as a “USB Printer” within the “Printers” section of Windows 10, but may actually appear as “Epson Stylus Color 880” in Device Manager.
The problem is that Windows 10 (especially 1709) doesn’t recognize the driver and therefore can’t get the printer to work.
The solution is to make sure that Windows 10 can run the driver, which means downloading the most suitable one from the internet or removing errors and other system issues. This is actually relatively simple, as explained below…
Cause
The reason for the issue is a difference in the way Windows 10 (1709) works with the underlying system drivers.
Some of the older drivers (written by hardware manufacturers) don’t work with the new hardware/IO APIs within the system, making Windows unable to manage any of the underlying issues you may be having.
To make sure this isn’t a problem, you need to make sure you’re using a compatible driver, or at least a driver that works with the way Windows version 1709 works. To do this, you need to make sure that you can get an effectively working version of the driver.
Solution
To resolve the issue, Microsoft has worked to resolve any of the underlying issues that have been causing conflicts, primarily by offering a new “Windows 10 Compatible Driver Pack 1709”, which is a manual update of the drivers required to run the Epson. Stylus Color 880.
When you go to Microsoft’s “download catalog” and type “epson stylus color 880” in the search box, you’ll see a number of packages you can download. At the bottom of the list should be the “compatibility” package, which if you download it, will allow you to run the installer.
When running the installer, reboot your system, and then make sure that Windows can load the printer like it did before. If you are unable to do this, then you need to ensure that you are able to get the most out of the application, which is done by cleaning up any of the potentially corrupted settings your system may have.