difference between UFR drivers

[SuprA]

Hi.

I have Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C3520i and I want to setup an UFR printer driver for it on Windows 10 x64. I see 4 types of UFR drivers on Canon's website:

1. Generic Plus UFR II Printer Driver V1.01

2. Generic UFR II Printer Driver V2.20

3. UFRII Printer Driver V30.15

4. UFR II/UFRII LT V4 Printer Driver V6.0

What is the difference between them?

[SuprA]

Nobody knows the answer?

[Danny]

Hi, SuprA!

Thanks for posting! While our forum community members are welcome to chime in, Canon does not provide direct support for imageRUNNER series products. Instead, your dealer will be able to help you! If you don't have a dealer and you're in the United States, please call us at 1-800-OK-CANON (1-800-652-2666) and we will be happy to provide you with the names of dealers in your area.

If you're outside the USA, visit http://global.canon and choose your country or region from the map for local support.

We hope this helps!

[SuprA]

It's not my printer and I don't know where it was purchased. I connect to this printer via VPN and I just want to install an UFR driver on my PC, so that I can use this printer.

[tylercaine89]

They are just different version of UFR II drivers, there is really no major difference between them other than subtle changes thoughout time to fix any discrepancies. You just need to pick the most recent version of driver and shouldnt have any issue. The UFR II driver is a generic driver that Canon uses. You can use the PCL drivers also if needed. 

[SuprA]

Thank you for reply, tylercaine89! How to choose the most recent version, by version number or by date of release?

[mahadal]

How times change, lol. Due to the discovery of PrintNightmare in the summer of 2021, Microsoft has had several huge security holes in how print drivers work, that can allow malware attackers to take control of a system via fake printer drivers.. probably going back 25+ years to NT 3...

Microsoft keeps trying to fix it, but new exploits keep getting discovered, and it is now extremely difficult to auto-deploy print drivers automatically when a client device connects to a remote print server. This can be a route to remotely attacking, via installing a fake driver from a malicious public Internet print server.

Pretty much every V3 and older print driver in this list from 2017 is now obsolete except for the last one, the Version 4 print driver which is a restricted user-mode driver and is not allowed to have System level privileges.

Going forward in 2022, all Windows printer drivers now need to be "version 4 / type 4 - restricted user-mode" to protect your computer from malware attack.

All the other older drivers are likely eventually going to be phased out and disappear.