Epson 7880 and macOS Ventura 13.4.1

[RobWignell]

I haven't used my Epson 7880 for more than six months.  When I sent a file to print a few days ago, I got an error message indicating that macOS doesn't support this printer any more - I needed to download and install a new driver.  From Epson USA, Epson Australia, and Epson EU, I have downloaded numerous drivers: SP9800_P7800_P9700_P7700_1262_AM.dmg, SPro7700_7800_7880_9700_9800_9880_1085_AM.dmg, epson650818eu.dmg and EpsonStylusPro9700_1262W_42.dmg .  All of these went  through the installation process but finished with an "Installation Failed" warning (see attached).

The fourth driver listed was provided through the Epson phone help desk (in Australia) who stepped me through the process of downloading this driver, from a location I hadn't seen before.  The attempted installation of this driver gave the same "Installation Failed" error message as the others.  At this point the Epson person advised that I must have some sort of security problem that is stopping the Epson driver from loading.

Following the Epson advice I have spent numerous hours trying to track down any possible problem with the help of an Apple Senior help person.  Under his supervision I have created a new user (with Admin rights) to see if this new user could download and install the driver that Epson Help had supplied.  The installation attempt produced the same error message as before.

Tomorrow he proposes that I create a partition on my drive (my non technical description) for a new install of Ventura, so that the Epson driver can be downloaded again and an installation can be attempted "as if" it is going onto a new computer.

This is a frustrating and unresolved process but I can't help thinking that it shouldn't be this complex.  Can anyone with an Epson Stylus Pro printer 3880, 7880, 9880 or earlier comment on their experience.

One additional concern was that one of the processes that the Apple Help person tried was to put my 2019 16" MacBookPro with i9 processor and current version of Ventura (details supplied in case they are relevant) into Safe mode.  Worryingly, after pressing the key combination as instructed, my laptop went into a loop where it displayed the safe mode screen for a second followed by a blank screen for about 8 seconds.  The loop could only be broken by turning off the power.

Grateful for advice or comments.

Rob

[Bozzdivine]

Here are a few things you might want to try:

    1. Ensure that you've deleted all previous instances of the driver before attempting a new installation. Sometimes, remnants of old drivers can cause conflicts.
    2. Try using a generic printer driver. This isn't an ideal solution, but it might get your printer working in the interim.
    3. Regarding your safe mode looping issue, it sounds like your macOS might be corrupted. You might want to consider reinstalling macOS, though I'd recommend backing up your files first!

[RobWignell]

Thanks Bozzdivine for your recommendations. 

After an extensive time with an Apple support expert the looping problem has been solved and, by creating a new clean partition with a temp identity the driver installed.  This definitively shows a problem in my macOS environment.  The two competing next options, are both labour intensive.  One is to progressively delete software that I am not using (as well as all previous Epson drivers) until I can get the Ventura driver to install.  The second is to back up everything and re-set the computer.

Given that I have been lazy with the installs of the past few Macs and just imported all my past junk from Time Machine, I intend to take the re-set route.  Time Machine is up to date and I have made a second copy to an external hard drive and a third to a fast SSD. 

There is a lot of software lingering on my current setup that I no longer use so a clean install with new downloads of all software has some attractions, apart from the amount of time it will take.