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Does anyone know the printer commands for a Brother MFC-J435w printer? I want to use Microsoft's Generic/Text printer driver in Windows XP to print to this printer. Brother's customer service department has not been helpful.

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Dani AI

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Short summary and likely cause: reported trying many Brother drivers and the Windows "Generic / Text Only" driver with no luck. Modern consumer inkjet AIOs like the MFC-J435W are usually driven by vendor software that renders pages on the PC (host‑based/GDI-style), so a raw-text or generic driver over a USB connection frequently will not produce output — the host driver must translate to the printer's format. The MFC-J435W is an inkjet AIO with USB and network support, so the safest option for USB is the vendor driver. (support.brother.com)

If the machine is on the network, practical workarounds exist: many Brother network print servers expose service queues such as BINARY_P1, TEXT_P1 and POSTSCRIPT_P1, and community/Linux guides recommend using LPD/HTTP URIs for these queues for models in this family (example: lpd://printer-ip/BINARY_P1 or http://printer-ip/POSTSCRIPT_P1). A simple test is to send a tiny text file with LPR to the TEXT_P1 queue to see whether the device will print plain text: 

lpr -S 192.168.1.50 -P TEXT_P1 C:\temp\test.txt

If that prints, switch to a PostScript or PPD-based driver (or the Brother CUPS wrapper) rather than the Generic/Text driver. (support.brother.com)

Actionable checklist tied to ’s suggestion (try close models): 1) If USB-only, install Brother’s official Printer Driver & Scanner Driver or the Brother Universal Printer Driver for Windows (these are the intended solution for XP-era machines). 2) If networked, try adding an LPD port using BINARY_P1 or TEXT_P1, or an HTTP/PostScript endpoint and test with LPR. 3) Print the printer’s network/config report or view its web page to confirm available services and firmware. 4) If none work, capture a small failed spool file and supply model + firmware to Brother support. (support.brother.com)

Practical cautions: trying drivers from nearby models sometimes helps (as noted), but host‑based devices often need the vendor driver to render correctly, so trial-and-error can be time consuming. If raw-text output is essential and the device refuses network LPD/HTTP text queues, the only reliable path is the vendor driver or replacing the device with one that supports plain-text or PCL/PostScript natively. (support.microsoft.com)

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Member Avatar for mjdodd

I do not know the exact printer, but very often you can use a printer driver from a less high level printer in the same manufacturers range (or of similiar type) and that often works.
M

Member Avatar for Forge13

I have tried at least a dozen Brother drivers from less high level printers, but none of them work. If anyone knows of one that will work please let me know. I tried so many drivers I gave up and tried to use the Generic/Text Only driver, but I cannot get that to work either.

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