XP Driver help (deperate)

[Tom]

I can't for the life of me find a driver for my dad's Epson Stylus Color 640 parallel port printer, that works in XP. The 2k/xp driver is marked as "unreliable" and xp won't register it in the hardware list once its installed, so it keeps asking to install the printer every time it boots. Yet, the drivers are installed, and the printer is configured, and will print fine (except for the clogged yellow and blue carts).

The win 9x drivers won't install, even in compat mode. So I just don't know what to do. And I've spent way too much time on this.

Please help 

[Lazybones]

Some times changing the Parallel port mode in the BIOS helps. Check if it is in Epp mode.

[Tom]

It was in epp, then I tried ecp+epp.

The printer works fine either way, it just keeps getting re-detected since XP won't actually register the printer in the hw list.

[Melbosa]

I think it isn't a Driver problem, but the XP install itself, based on your description of the problem.

[Tom]

Well, it seems to be both. XP seems to think that the driver is known to be unstable. I dunno.

I just did a windows update that seems to have changed quite a bit of XP even though this install was mostly up to date, the find hardware and other dialogs have changed majorly, it removed the printers defined in the printer cpl, and I've now just reinstalled the printer drivers, and it seems to be behaving better, but I won't know till I reboot.

[Tom]

Nope. didn't help at all. Its still re detecting it   even though when It scanned earlier I checked the "do not attempt to install this again", its still deciding to scan. 

Its rather annoying. Might just be best to suggest that my dad gets a new cheap ass InkJet for about what it'd cost to replace the color ink in this one, and have a hopefully better printer, without this issue.