This is Microsoft's bread and butter a cryptic error message: "The printer installation failed. Operation could not be completed (error 0x00000643)." All I was doing was trying to install my Brother HL-2170W printer, which is a great printer minus Vista's stupid error.
Can you tell me how to fix this?
Luckily, I found a fix and it is painless.
- Open the Computer Management console
- Click on the Device Manager
- Drill down to the WSD Print Provider
- Right-click the WSD Print Device and click uninstall
- Now install the printer again by using the Add Printer wizard
- The installation will fail with the same cryptic message
- Right-click on the name of your computer (SATURN for me) in the Device Manager and select Scan for Hardware Changes
- It should find the device we just uninstalled. We have just successfully installed the printer.
Hopefully, these steps help you. They have worked for me twice! Cheers!