Brother Label Maker Driver - W7 to W11

I'm trying to install my USB Brother PT1950 label maker on new W11. Officially W11 is not supported. The hardware is probably 20 years old. I found the driver for W7 but installation did nothing. The UI came up but would not print. A 2nd attempt failed because driver or printer was 'in use'. but I can't clean it up. Followed extensive instructions and rebooted. Still not clean.

Trying to figure out if this is worth chasing down or bite the bullet and buy a new one. I hate spending money for something that I only use very occasionally. Yes, I could use current one without the PC, but it is really a yucky on device keyboard. I like the UI of the software.

Truthfully, I'd leave that one behind and pick up something like the Dymo Labelwriter 400 Turbo. They are all over eBay for $30-$40, and they're a great and fast label printer that works OOTB with Windows 11. I've had mine for around 15 years, and it's still printing as good as when I bought it. Labels are dirt cheap, I buy clone Dymo 3 1/2" x 1 1/8" labels for $15 for 3500 on Amazon. It's a thermal printer, so no ink or ribbons, just run a cleaning pad through it every 500 labels or so. I've probably printed around 10,000 labels on it since I got it, the thing is bulletproof! It will handle labels up to 2" wide, and there are tons of label sizes for every occasion.

That looks good. Used to use one of those at work for stamps. But I have tons of leftover tape for my current one -- diff colors and sizes I think this is the successor to the one I have and it looks like the tape is compatible. I will have to double check.

So far, I've had good luck installing some ancient software from W7 to W11 but I suppose a printer driver is a bit more embedded. I might try one more time just in case.

I could try to install it to my W10 laptop. Not as convenient to use, but it would suffice. Maybe W10 a bit more compatible than W11? Actually I haven't decided what to do with the W7 system either. Maybe it will end up in the basement and I could keep it available for on-demand. Some of my tivo converting and editing software is limited to that system as well. Rarely needed, but ya never know.

I've had mixed results with old print drivers on later versions of WIndows. It may be possible to cajole those old print drivers to behave on Windows 11, hard to say.

I found this page, don't know if they're lying, but they claim to have Windows 11 compatible drivers for your printer.


I also found this page...

Looks promising! Thanks. Will check them out tonite.

You never know. Could be the silver bullet!

Sigh..... no go. The first download allegedly came bundled with a bunch of other driver maintenance stuff, but I could not get to the actual driver without buying premium even though it was supposed to be free trial. Coulda been me. Uninstalled. The 2nd one said it was not compatible with my system.

Before I tried those, I did re-try the W7 driver version on my clean W10 system that had never had a Brother install before. It seemed promising. Finished the install and said to re-start machine. But then there was no UI to run it. I tried typing a test "page" via the Device page. First it said the tape in the printer didn't match the tape size being requested. (no request was made). So I put in 3/4" tape as it seemed to want. Next Test Page attempt said the printer was in an error state. When I closed that box, it actually spit out 3" of empty tape. So close, but yet so far away!!!

The good news is as I was looking at the successor to this one, I saw it has some maybe cool newer graphical features. Or, I'll attach the label maker back on the W7 and put it all in the basement to gather dust. decisions... decisions.