Here’s a helpful story about troubleshooting the . Title: The Case of the Silent Printer
“Classic,” Marco said. “Canon stopped releasing new drivers for the MG3100 years ago, and Windows 11 has stricter driver signing and security. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead.”
“Here’s the trick,” Marco said. He clicked “Add manually” and chose “Add a local printer or network printer with manual settings.” He selected “Use an existing port” (USB001) and then under Manufacturer , picked Canon . In the right pane, instead of “MG3100 series,” he scrolled down and selected “Canon Inkjet Printer” or sometimes “Canon IJ Network Driver” for USB. If that wasn’t there, he used Generic > Text Only just to test communication.
Marco explained that the original Canon driver installer from 2015 would fail on Windows 11. “Instead, let Windows try first.”
When the installer still hesitated, Marco opened the Microsoft Update Catalog online and searched for “Canon MG3100.” He found a basic INF driver from 2019 (signed for Windows 10). “Install this manually,” he said. In Device Manager, he right-clicked the unknown device → Update driver → Browse my computer → Let me pick from a list → Have Disk → pointed to the extracted INF. It worked instantly.
